Terrorscape (Horrorscape)

by Campbell, Nenia

  “Oh, but you are. I created you. I made you into what you are now—it's stunning. You are stunning.” He pushed her back, leaning over her. “Such a fascinating blend of emotions. I repulse you. I captivate you. And your very being captures the essence of that struggle so beautifully. Yes, you are a work of art.”

  “When does it end?” His smile was thin and knife-sharp. “When I grow bored.” He paused and added deliberately, “Or when you fall out of love with me. Neither seems very likely to happen anytime soon, though, hmm?”

  “I hate you.”

  He laughed.

  “No. I mean it. I hate you.”

  He pushed her hand aside.

  “Hatred is about possession. It is all-consuming, cruel, and vainglorious. When love is allowed to fester, it becomes twisted and corrupt; it settles deep in the heart—” he drew the fabric back from her shoulders “—and metastasizes, sending its dark roots through the body to raze all that stands in its way. Love is chaste and pure. Love is banal. No, hatred has infinitely more possibilities.”

  His mouth moved down the line of skin now bared from neck to navel, and Val sucked in a breath, her arms over her head, grasping, searching, reaching desperately for something only just out of reach.

  “This is how I kill you—capture—possession— enjoying your beauty even as you begin to die inside so very slowly.” His hands, at her hips, kneaded the flesh. “And when you cease to amuse me—when your leaves begin to wilt and your colors begin to fade—I may very well decide to prune you, the way one might deadhead a drooping rose.”

  “You mean, you'll kill me.”

  “Val.” Her skirt was sliding up her thighs. “Each time you lie with me, I make you die a little death.” She arched, bringing him up by the chin to kiss him. He obliged her. Just another game. One game in a long line of many, to be played in accordance with his capricious whims. He will be the death of me.

  “ La petite mort.”

  He smiled against her mouth. “If you insist.”

  He will be the death of me. Unless—unless I am the death of him. Her fingers slipped beneath the pillow, and he lowered his mouth to her breast. Val gasped, fingers closing and convulsing around the smooth plastic. When he shifted his weight, pausing to draw breath, she said, urgently, “Gavin—”

  He lifted his head, and she saw his pale eyes open wide as she plunged the knife into his throat, into the curled edges of the scar she had left over a year ago.

  The effect was instantaneous, dramatic. A fountain of scarlet, crimson ribbons. Spatters of liquid warmth at her face and breast. Each attempt to draw breath resulted in a gargling sound and frothy bubbles of blood. His hand at his neck, slipping, smearing red down his bare chest like war paint.

  She expected fear. Fear was more instinctual than emotive; she had thought the prevailing fear of death would override the scrambling cipher he possessed in lieu of empathy.

  Nothing. The sketchbook had fallen back open to the rose he had sketched only minutes before. The petals were now dappled with and smeared by streaks and spatters of blood.

  Hatred. Slavish devotion .

  Art.

  Or madness.

  She could taste the blood in his mouth, see the light fading from his eyes as she kissed him for the last time. His body convulsed. She felt cold metal between her ribs. He had managed to grasp the knife with the hand not holding onto her throat.

  I will destroy us both.

  He died, and as he fell, carved a gash that pointed, arrow like, to her belly.

  She waited until his lips were cold.

  Then she got dressed and picked up the phone.

  The end.

  Forward This erotic short story takes place in the same world as my Horrorscape trilogy. Some people were curious about Gavin's father, who is not really mentioned in great detail in the storyline, and his mother, who largely remains an enigma.

  (I like enigmas! They don't require explanations! Yes, I am lazy. I am a writer, after all. Just kidding— but not really.)

  There actually is a reason for that vagueness, though, and if I ever get around to writing my spinoff standalone about Gavin's mum and dad, you will see why. But just in case I don't—THIS.

  I wrote this short for a small, private writingthemed group I was involved with for a while. It has since disbanded but the friends I made through it have not. There were several “hazing” rituals, and one of them was an erotica writing challenge. Ex(xx)members of this group may well recognize this story and giggle that they were the first to read my—well— first public attempt at writing erotica.

  Or, as they call it, porn.

  Or, as I call it, my shamefest.

  I hope you enjoy it. I'll be over in the corner. You know. Cringing in embarrassment.

  J'adoube The scent of roses hung heavy in the air, though no blossoms were to be seen in the dark loft. His apartment loomed over the streets of Palma like some large bird of prey, appropriately giving him a bird's eye view of the neighborhood. Spain's major port city was beautiful by night, the way the oceans reflected the moon and the stars, but Anna Mecozzi could not see them from Damían Álvarez's window. It mattered not. Neither of them cared for such things.

  His mouth was on her throat the moment the door was closed. She felt his teeth close around the diamond necklace she wore around her neck. Then he kissed her mouth, and the sharp facets and metal clasps cut almost as cruelly into her mouth as his teeth. His hands found her ass and squeezed her through the thin silk of her evening gown. “No underwear,” he growled. “Bad girl.”

  She bared her teeth at him. “You have no idea.” That made him grin, and it was no less feral than her own smile. “Why don't you show me, then?”

  Anna grabbed him by his tie and shoved him back against the wall of his foyer. He tried to kiss her and she pulled her head back haughtily, giving him a saucy smile as she ground her hips against the bulge straining to break free from his pants. He tore at her gown, snapping the shoulder strap that had previously been fastened with a rather elegant swath of silk shaped to look like a flower.

  “Bastard,” she said, bucking against his hips with enough force to make him gasp. “This was my debutante gown. My fiance bought this for me in Paris.” Each word was punctuated by a jerk that had him moaning lower and lower in his throat. “I'm going to kill you.”

  He laughed huskily, though his black eyes were smoldering with lust. “Really?” “Knife in your throat,” she hissed. “I'll drink your Dago blood like wine while I'm resting my feet on a rug made from your worthless Spanish hide.”

  “Before or after you fuck me?”

  “During.”

  “Good. I love foreplay.”

  Damían tackled her and the two of them fell on the floor. She scratched at him, hard enough to get fuzz from his suit jacket beneath her nails. He yanked her gown down to her waist. She ripped his shirt open, causing buttons to scatter over his hardwood floors. They went rolling into the living room, and she slammed him into a table, causing a vase to shatter.

  Anna ended up on top. She straddled his waist and kissed him, unknotting the tie from around his neck and sliding the silk over the tanned skin of his throat before tossing it aside. He tilted his head back and she ghosted the path the silk had taken, trailing kisses down his muscular torso.

  He had an incredible body. The first time she'd seen him, he'd been in a tux. His frame was deceptively lean, and she'd heard he was a grandmaster, so Anna had automatically assumed he was one of those bookish intellectuals her parents were forever trying to marry her off with. But they had never suggested Damían Álvarez. Quite the opposite, in fact.

  This had aroused her curiosity…and other things. Oh, but she soon found out why. Because at her engagement party in Milan, he'd approached her, danced with her, sweeping her across the floor with the lightness of a summer zephyr, and as he bent in a courtly fashion to kiss her hand at the end, he'd murmured, “I have a proposition.”

  “Oh?” she h
ad said sweetly, pulling her hand out of his. “I bet you'll be in my bed before the end of the night.”

  She had tilted her head. “That's preposterous.”

  “That's what they said about my using the Grob opening during the tournament in Moscow. But I won anyway. And I'll win you.”

  And he'd been half-right. They hadn't done it in his bed. They hadn't made it much farther than the door before he tore her clothes off. So that was at least two dresses the son of a bitch had destroyed so far. She bit one of his nipples and heard him hiss.

  Few men were capable of giving her what she wanted. Damían Álvarez was the sole exception. He was almost as fucked-up as she was. Perhaps more so. Their chemistry was explosive and caustic, poisonous to anyone else but themselves. He was perfectly willing to try anything she suggested: except submission. On that, Damían did not bend. He was ever the master, never the slave.

  Or so he thought. She leered at him, with gray eyes as cold and calm as a frozen lake, before moving lower, tugging lightly at the hairs that trailed from his navel with her teeth. She heard him inhale sharply as she prodded him with her tongue through his pants and felt him jerk against her mouth.

  “Hypocrite,” she said.

  “Whore,” he replied. She clicked her tongue at him and yanked sharply at his fly with her teeth. The button popped open, and she yanked down the zipper hard enough to make him arch his back and say, “Fuck.” He was already hard, had been for quite a while, and she admired him for a few seconds, just teasing him with her breath. Then she let her tongue play over the gleaming tip, savoring the salty, musky animal scent of him, before taking him all the way into her mouth. She let her teeth scrape against his shaft, just enough to cause some mild discomfort, and felt him shudder.

  Anna pulled back a little, and stroked his balls while she kissed and licked the last few inches. She loved the feel of him, iron sheathed in silk, with tissue-thin skin covered in veins. As dark as he was, his skin was almost as pale as hers here, except at the tip, where it darkened to a deep rose.

  He cursed at her when she pulled away, and blew on his damp skin. “Fine. We'll play it your way.”

  She stroked his cheek with her nails. “We always do.”

  Then she was beneath him again, and he kicked of his pants and yanked down her dress, closing his mouth over one of the pink nipples as he worked the silk off her small hips. Her skin was as pale as his was dark, and had always vaguely reminded him of cream. He lapped at her as if it were, suckling and biting, and his hand slipped between her legs. “What will your husband say when he finds out you're not a good Catholic virgin?” he purred. “I imagine he'll be disappointed.”

  “I'll think of something,” Anna breathed. “Maybe…oh…maybe I'll tell him I was ra—aah— ped.”

  “Mm, it's a pity you won't let me teach you how to play chess, mi cariña.” His lips moved back to her mouth, fleetingly, before he returned his attention to her other breast. “You're so cold-blooded, I imagine it would come as naturally to you as breathing.”

  “Well, that's no good, is it? Because I like a challenge.”

  His fingers probed deeper. “Oh, but think of the countless men you'd destroy.”

  “Tempting.”

  “Think of…all the things I could do to you on that chessboard.”

  “Slightly more tempting.” “Taking your king with my queen,” his fingers continued their cruel assault, “Over and over. And perhaps…if you're…very good…we'll try playing with just the pieces.”

  “Very tempting.”

  God, just when she started to get bored, he reminded her why she let him keep coming back. His incredible body, his sinful mouth, those laughing Moorish eyes, the way he could make her scream so loud that she often marveled that her voice didn't just snap like an overstretched rubber band.

  Anna closed her eyes, arching her back, and she dug her hands into his scalp, twisting the soft tufts of black hair to keep him in place. “Harder, Ragazzino.”

  He bit her hard, and his hand was replaced by his cock. Which was exactly what she wanted. She laughed, delightedly, like a little girl. “Little boy?” he said, arching an eyebrow.

  “Prove me wrong.” He exhaled and braced his arms on either side of her head. “If you were as poor of a lay as you are a liar, I'd be out the door.”

  She choked when he slipped partway inside her, in one smooth single stroke that made her feel like she were butter and he was a hot knife.

  “So you admit I'm good,” she said, looking up at him through her lashes with clashing shyness. “I never said that. You're acceptab—aah.” She bucked her hips, pushing him deeper inside. She smiled at him in triumph; a smile that disappeared when he said, raggedly but nonetheless coldly, “I'll leave you like this, half-finished, if you don't stop smirking at me like that.”

  And then they both stopped speaking, except for their moans and gasps of pleasure. She wrapped her legs around his waist. Anna had always loved watching his face during coitus, the way his full lips swelled from their violent kisses making them look even fuller when parted with desire, his eyes closed, the thick sweep of eyelashes smeared across his cheekbones like black charcoal.

  He was a dark angel. She wanted to sculpt him, and then she wanted to smash him.

  He laughed into her hair as he came, and delivered a final thrust with a vibration that made her bones quiver and melt. Anna couldn't have walked if she tried—and he knew it, the smug bastard. He grabbed the tie she'd discarded earlier and picked her up, carrying her to his bed.

  “What if I get pregnant?” she asked him, before he lashed her to his bedposts for the second round. He was allergic to latex and she hated anything that deprived her of sensation, so they never used condoms. She knew it was foolish, but life wasn't worth living without a few risks.

  Damían thought it over. “Hmm.” He kissed her, languorous and deep, as he dipped his fingers into a glass of wine on the nightstand. “Better hope he takes after me, not you.” He trailed the scarlet liquid over her body, and both of them watched the liquid trail across her skin like blood. Then he bent his head and licked it all off before the wine could soak into his sheets.

  “Fool. It doesn't—oh that's nice—work like that. Children inherit half both their parents' genes.”

  Damían rested his forehead against hers, an ironic twist to his mouth. “God have mercy on the world.” Forward

  This next story was the result of a lost bet. I forget what the terms of the bet were, but it was with a very evil woman who decided that I should be made to write a story about incest.

  Yes, it was inspired by Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Right-o. Back to the cringing corner of shame.

  En Prise Anna Mecozzi sat on the shaded porch of Wolverton Manor, basking in the dying light of the magnificent New England sunset. She charmed her newest suitor with hard lemonade in tall, frosted glasses while her children played in the yard.

  “Predators and prey” was a popular favorite among the Mecozzi children. Eight-year-old Celeste was running, hand-inhand with her twin brother, Dorian. The two of them giggled and screamed as their eldest brother chased after them. The twins split up—Dorian shoving his sister aside to make a break for the grove of willows that surrounded the dried-up koi pond. “Cheater!” she cried, which quickly dissolved into a wordless shriek of terror.

  Gavin pounced, pinning his younger sister to the ground. His lips brushed her throat, over her jugular vein, and he bit her lightly. “You're dead,” he breathed, and her heart jumped. Then he leaned back on his heels and patted her cheek, and the chase started anew.

  While roles were frequently tried on and exchanged, like a bit of fancy dress, some were set in stone. Fifteen-year-old Gavin, twelve-year-old Luca, and thirteen-year-old Anna-Maria were always the predators. Always.

  Luca wasn't at all fast, but he was strong— particularly for his age. He also had a temper and the younger children liked to tease him, but it was like poking a sleeping crocodile. Eventually he
would lose what patience he had and then grab the nearest offender at hand, pinning them down with his substantial bulk until they couldn't breathe. Groveling was the price of freedom; the amount varied with the degree of his anger and the intensity of the provocation.

  Anna-Maria wasn't all that strong at all, despite what she liked to think, but she was fast. Sometimes two or three children working together could overpower her. A favorite trick was to have one child grab Anna-Maria's legs to make her stumble. Then two of them would sit on her. Retribution always followed such attempts, though, and it was as swift as it was cruel. Anna-Maria knew her brothers' and sisters' weaknesses and secret fears, and had no qualms about exploiting them on the slightest pretense. She had once locked Celeste—then six—in the hall closet with a couple of wolf spiders, for embarrassing her in front of a boy she had fancied at the time.

  Wolf spiders weren't poisonous, but they did enjoy a bit of a chase themselves. It wasn't until Celeste's screaming stopped abruptly that AnnaMaria opened the door to let her out, only to discover that her youngest sister had passed out from terror— after wetting herself.

  Gavin was both fast and strong, but not quite as strong as Luca would someday become, nor as fast as his sister already was. The children almost unanimously agreed that he was the best predator, however, because he was the only one who performed his role “correctly.” He gave them a taste of fear, accompanied by the seductive whispers of power and death. He made them aware of their own fragile mortality and, best of all, he made it appealing.

  Luca was fun to annoy, and Anna-Maria was fun to threaten each other with, but Gavin they took seriously and approached with caution. He was not incapable of being cruel—in fact, in many ways he surpassed even Anna-Maria in his innovations—but it was not a weapon he wielded high-handedly. Ambiguous fear, he believed, was often far more potent than the kind that is upfront.

  Anna-Maria both loathed and respected her older brother. She respected him because he was powerful —intelligent, strong, and wildly handsome, and she wanted those things for herself. She loathed him because he had those things and she had no way of taking them from him they way she could with more tangible things like her mother's diamond jewelry. She loathed him more because he was a man, which automatically meant people took him more seriously. She loathed him most of all, though, because she was in love with him.