Pernicious Red (When The Wicked Play Book 1)

by Natalie Bennett

  What?

  “What are you talking about? You’re the one who told me to kill her!” I pushed against his chest; he didn’t move an inch.

  “I made it easy for you, Red. All you had to do was slit her throat. So why do I feel like you purposely screwed up?”

  “I can’t just murder someone because you told me to do so.” I jabbed a finger in the general direction of the corpse to get my point across. “I’m not wired like you! And if this is supposed to be your version of Little Red, you need to go re-read the book.”

  “See, that’s just it. This is my version, and the sooner you do what I already know you will, the sooner this will all be over.”

  “Fuck you, Channing, and fuck this game! Why are you forcing me to play when we both know I have zero chances of winning or walking away from you?”

  He may have flashed another grin but his head dipped to my neck and hid his mouth from view. I swallowed when his soft lips brushed over my flesh.

  With my head trapped in his hands, I couldn’t turn away.

  “If I gave you all the answers, it would suck the fun out of everything. You’re a quick learner. Maybe you’ll figure it all out before things get messy,” he continued, swiping his tongue upward in slow motion.

  “But you need patience.” Dropping his hands from my face, he hooked his fingers in the belt loops of my jeans and forcefully shoved them down my legs.

  I hissed as the denim left behind a slight sting. “What are you doing?!”

  When he traced over my hips with the pad of his thumbs, my insides constricted for an entirely different reason.

  God, what was wrong with me?

  “I know you want my cock, but I’m not ready to give it to you yet. You’re not ready to feel the way I want you to,” he explained before slowly going to his knees, taking my underwear with him.

  “Channing, please—”

  “You want my tongue inside your pussy? I already know how wet I make you.” He gave me a quick grin. “If you say please again, I might let you come on my face.”

  “Move.” Placing my hands on his shoulders, I crossed my legs together and pushed.

  “That works too,” he shrugged, making me yelp as he forced my legs back apart. His mouth was covering my pussy in less than a second, devouring me completely.

  Pulling his hair only encouraged him to add more pressure.

  The room filled with the wet sounds from his mouth and my choppy breaths. He licked up and down my folds, pushing his tongue inside as far it would go just to pull all the way out and roll my clit with the tip of it.

  If his hands weren’t holding my thighs, there was no way I would’ve stayed upright. My teeth sunk into my lower lip. My gaze clashed with his. The hunger in his eyes was mortally terrifying.

  They were oceans of blue, wide open and letting me see the darkest depths of his obsession.

  I tore my gaze away and ended up looking at the back of the dead girl’s head. Holding back a moan, I looked up and focused on a water stain on the ceiling.

  “Channing!” I squealed, feeling his teeth sink down on my swollen clit.

  “Don’t look away when my face is buried in your pussy,” he growled, using one hand to spread my lips even further.

  When his wicked tongue resumed its assault, the moans I’d been holding back spilled from my mouth. They were loud enough that Alice would be able to hear them from the next room.

  Burying my fingers back in his soft, black locks, I held him in place, feeling my climax building up at a rapid pace.

  I should’ve been clawing at his eyes or trying to tear out clumps of his hair.

  My head and my body divided in two, allowing sick pleasure to control all logic.

  My body tensed, muscles going taut as heat pervaded from my core and blazed through my veins. His name came out as a silent scream. Sucking in a breath, I tossed my head back into the wall.

  My orgasm seemed to never end.

  Channing continued to play with me, closing his mouth over my sensitive nub to make me come again.

  When he finally stood again, he had to keep hold of my waist so I remained upright. Embarrassment heated my face but he wouldn’t let me turn away. Without saying a word, he brought his mouth to mine, slipping his tongue inside and making me taste my shame.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Rosalie

  I woke up sore and disoriented, forgetting where I was for only a moment.

  The sweet ache between my legs reminded me of what had happened a short while ago, making me crave something other than Channing’s tongue. Touching my fingers to my lips, I rolled them together as if I could still feel his.

  He was using the way I felt about him to his advantage—as a lethal weapon. I wanted to hate his guts and adore him at the same time.

  Exhaling loudly, I tried to comb my fingers through the mess of windblown hair on top of my head. I hated this feeling of uncertainty.

  Why wasn’t this as simple as it should have been?

  Channing was a bad person. I knew for a fact he was either directly or indirectly responsible for the deaths of three women who favored me in terms of resemblance.

  I knew he was playing a game with me but already had all his answers. And this was practically kidnapping. So why couldn’t I just despise him? With no immediate answers and a color spectrum that went vastly beyond simply being black and white, I tried to shake away the recent memory and focus on the present.

  The room was dark with a soft glow coming from the bathroom light. Channing was nowhere in sight but I wasn’t foolish enough to believe he’d wandered far.

  He’d all but forced me to fall asleep, standing over me until I could no longer pretend I was.

  Peering over the end of the bed, I saw the body was gone.

  Kicking the heavy comforter off my legs, I got up and walked to the bathroom doorway.

  The ugly decorative piece of plastic that served as a shower curtain had been pulled down and used to cocoon the redhead’s corpse.

  I stared into her vacant, glassy eyes and took a step back. The color of her skin was beginning to change from porcelain to an ugly purplish-black.

  The greasy burger I’d consumed threatened to come back up in chunks. Seeing her like this was somehow worse than staring at her lying on the carpet.

  A soft click drew my attention to the front door of the hotel room. Channing stood in the doorway, making the already blacked out room seem ten times darker.

  “How did you sleep?”

  “As well as you think I did,” I mumbled, feeling oddly exposed even though I was fully clothed. A gust of cold air blew in behind him, making me involuntarily shiver.

  “Figured as much.” He stepped inside and shut the door.

  “Why is that girl in the tub?”

  “I was tired of looking at her and the cleaning service can’t be here for another few hours.”

  Something told me this ‘cleaning service’ wasn’t a normal company, which meant there were multiple people involved in whatever this truly was.

  “My brother already left with your friend. Her safety is based on how well you behave,” he continued.

  To go where?

  “Why can’t you tell me what’s really going on? Why do we have to play this game?” I threw my hands up in frustration. This ping-pong effect was wearing out my already non-existent nerves.

  I had just as many answers as I did when this all started. I thought back to the note but couldn’t remember it word for word.

  “This is about more than me, right? You’ve had ample opportunities to stick your dick inside me and haven’t, so I know that’s not your motive. Tell me what you really want.”

  He rolled his neck and sighed exaggeratedly.

  “You’re right. If all I wanted to do was fuck you, I would have come into your room while you were sleeping and taken whatever I wanted. I would have taken it again in the bathroom the other night, and again outside your grandma’s house.”

&n
bsp; He stalked towards me and déjà vu from earlier had me making sure he couldn’t trap me against a wall. A wolfish grin of bright white teeth flashed in the dark.

  “You wanna run from me, Red? That wouldn’t be a very wise thing to do. I mean…how far do you think you’d get before I caught you again? And what would I do to you afterward?”

  The feeling of entrapment returned full force, making it hard to breathe properly.

  He kept reminding me that this was a game, but the only rules I knew for certain were to stay out of the woods, and not to involve the police.

  “What if I went to the police anyway? What if I risked a life to save someone else’s?”

  “One: we both know that wouldn’t happen. You would never let Alice die because of your actions. And two? Well, let me show you.”

  He pulled his phone out of his jacket pocket and tapped a few buttons on the screen.

  “Come here.” Crooking a finger, he ushered me forward, laughing at my blatant hesitation to go anywhere near him.

  “Come on,” he coaxed. “I won’t bite—not yet, anyway.”

  I frowned and slowly walked over to him, trying to get a look at whatever was on his illuminated screen without getting closer than necessary.

  He saved me the hassle and spun his cell around so I could see a video that he’d just hit play on.

  It took me a minute to recognize the girl’s voice. The begging belonged to Destiny, my co-worker. The only visible parts of her were her arms. Something was keeping them pinned to a scuffed wooden table.

  “I did everything you asked,” she sobbed. “I didn’t tell her anything, I swear; please let me go.”

  “Keep watching,” Channing urged when I looked up at him.

  “Nothing personal,” a voice that sounded strikingly similar to Bryce’s said. In a blurry motion that was almost too quick to catch, a hammer slammed down onto the back of Destiny’s hand.

  As if it was me who had been struck, I jumped backward.

  My stomach rolled again as the loud unmistakable sound of bone crunching could be heard.

  Channing ended the video just as a chilling wail of equal parts pain and terror came from Destiny’s mouth.

  “You sick fuck,” I spewed at him, putting as much distance between us as possible.

  “Are we back to this again? I just proved to you she was nothing but a flunky this entire time. I have people everywhere, Red, specifically to keep an eye on you. I know everything about you. That’s what makes this so interesting.

  “I almost want to tell you all I know, but giving up that information would be giving up this whole thing.”

  “Why do you keep talking in circles? Just tell me what you want!” I fought to keep my composure; I didn’t want him to know how much this was affecting me, but it was a hard battle to win.

  I thought I wanted to play along, but the second he put his face between my legs and made me come with a dead body in the room, I knew I was way out of my element.

  I didn’t stand a damn chance. He would control my every move, just like any master manipulator did when controlling a key player in the game.

  “I’ve been trying to make you see what was right in front of you for a very long fucking time. You think I want us to be like this?” He circled a finger in the empty space that separated me from him.

  “We’re going to have a beautiful future together once you open your eyes to the bigger picture.”

  That confirmed it—Channing was a lunatic.

  “You won’t ever get me to do—or to be—whatever it is you want. Eventually, I will get away from you.”

  He stared at me as if contemplating something, rubbing his plush bottom lip with the pad of his index finger.

  “We’re leaving in five minutes,” he finally said with zero emotion in his voice, walking back out of the room.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Rosalie

  My life had been turned upside down by a man who should have been too pretty to be an obsessive killer.

  He was currently driving the car I was forced to be a passenger in. The Burrows had everything, so what went wrong in Channing’s life for him to be this way?

  I thought back to the note and wished I’d held onto it. One line in particular was still vivid in my mind’s eye.

  It starts with twelve and it ends with one.

  But twelve what?

  Four people were already dead.

  And Destiny may have been a backstabbing bitch, but that didn’t equal an omen of death in my opinion.

  Alice? Well, she was my best-friend. I refused to doubt if it was an authentic relationship or staged. If I didn’t even have her, then I really was the loner I often compared myself to.

  If my mind rambled too much, I would conjure up all the disturbing scenarios of what Cole could be doing to her. I forced myself to think of a way out of this, or to see whatever it was Channing was trying to show me.

  “The riddle said it ‘starts with twelve and it ends with one’; would that number happen to be eight now?”

  He didn’t answer right away, letting an uncomfortable silence linger between us.

  “It’s seven,” he grit out, shooting me a look I couldn’t decipher.

  So there goes that theory…unless…

  “You’ve killed five people.” It was a statement, not a question.

  “A number of people are dead.” He twisted the statement, confirming my theory was right after all, without admitting his guilt. I would get no further explanation on who they were.

  “Why me? There are so many other options, so many more interesting women to torture.”

  “Don’t be melodramatic. You haven’t come close to experiencing true torture, and because of me, you never will. I thought you’d have figured out by now that none of this is random. You’re a Morgue, which means something.”

  “Is…this because of my mother?”

  “No,” he replied slowly. “Why would you think that?”

  Huffing out a breath of annoyance, I crossed my arms and adjusted the stupid red cloak serving as my blanket across my lap.

  “We both know I killed her; let’s stop dancing around what you won’t say. I’m not proud of it but I don’t feel as broken as a little girl who lost her mother should.”

  It was the most I’d spoken on the topic, ever. I’d tried to erase my mom’s memory altogether but she wouldn’t stop haunting me. Now it seemed her demons were coming to collect on a debt that was now by default my responsibility.

  “She never deserved the title,” he said after another elongated period of silence. “But this isn’t because of her. This is about me giving someone what they deserve.”

  When his hand came across the middle console and gripped my knee, I tried to push him away. I hated the way his touch made me feel.

  What transpired between us in the motel almost seemed like ages ago, but every time I looked at his devilish smirk or caught his eyes on me instead of the road, my stomach clenched and my pussy throbbed.

  Being attracted to him—wanting him—was a problem I needed to cleanse myself of.

  “I can hear the gears turning in that pretty head of yours. Keep going, you’re almost there.”

  I didn’t bother responding because, yet again, I didn’t understand what the hell he was talking about. I settled on glaring down at his hand like it was a viper invading my private lair.

  The petrol station he pulled up to was in a part of Ponty-Poole I had never been to before.

  For once, the silence between us had given me time to think.

  Channing had more power in this town than I’d initially thought. You couldn’t run around dropping bodies like a Hansel and Gretel breadcrumb trail without being caught.

  One of the rules had been not to involve the police, and he hadn’t commented on why, but thinking about it made me remember that the Burrows had ties to the Ponty-Poole law enforcement.

  Going to them would make them have to cover up more than they already p
otentially were. I was a liability, which only solidified the threats Channing had been making.

  This was the only time in my life I had regretted keeping my head down and doing my own thing. A lot of people gossiped about Channing and his family; I just never listened.

  I watched him from afar like one would the sunset. He was something to look at that I never thought I’d be able to touch.

  “I’m going to trust you to stay in the car, but if you decide to run, remember that this is my game and what your role is.”

  I stared at his back as he got out of the car, blinking when he suddenly turned around and leaned his head back inside.

  “The wolf only needs to catch you once.” He slammed the door after shoving me into another orbit of his confusion. The riddles were going to give me an aneurism.

  As soon as the gas station doors slid closed and he was fully inside, I looked around the car for some kind of weapon I could use against him.

  Feeling beneath the seat while keeping a watchful eye on the door, my fingers skimmed over what felt like a tire iron.

  Pulling it down until it was slightly at the edge of the seat I tried to formulate a quick plan of what to do once—if—I got away.

  First thing first was figuring out where Cole had taken Alice. I wrapped the cloak around my shoulders and repositioned myself against the warm leather seat, preparing for the worst but hoping for the best.

  Maybe running was a stupid thing to do, but if he killed Alice, that was half his leverage and the sole reason I hadn’t booked it already.

  While I didn’t think Destiny deserved to die, she was the one who got involved with Channing and his secret group of misfits on her own accord.

  Biding my time, I tried to play off what I was doing by pretending to do nothing at all. Channing returned in less than five minutes. He pumped the gas, filling his tank up, and then got back in.

  “I’ll make sure you get a decent meal when we reach where we’re going.”

  “Are we leaving Ponty-Poole?” I asked as nonchalantly as possible.

  “No. We’re going to my grandfather’s farm.”

  “Your grandfather?” I questioned, swearing that the man had long been dead.