by Zoe Blake
Now I’m a raging inferno. It’s hard to think clearly with that annoying rush of blood pounding in my ears. “Gage…” I frown before rolling my eyes like he just got it all wrong. “Puh-lease. Do you think we’re in a relationship?” Maybe if he thinks that’s not what I want, it will make him want it. Guys always want what they can’t have.
“Well, what else do you expect me to think you’re getting at with that bullshit?”
“Look, I just don’t want you running off and making me out to be a whore. Most guys can’t handle relationships like this…”
Relieved, he grabs me and pulls me to his chest in an embrace most people would think meant “I love you,” but to Gage it only means, I want to fuck you and use you. “Vi, I would never… I don’t fuck and tell.” He lets out a short laugh. “Don’t take it the wrong way, babe.” Tossing the covers off, he pushes to his feet, stretching on his way to the bathroom.
I laugh, feigning that my heart hasn’t just shattered into a million fragments. The second he disappears into the bathroom; I clench my jaw and grab my phone, tempted to chuck it at the wall. A low hiss presses through my teeth, and I pound my fist into the mattress over and over.
“It’s not that I wouldn’t be in a relationship with you,” he calls from the open door, the splash of his piss making my eye twitch. “It’s just that I’m not the kind of guy that can settle down.”
No shit. No fucking shit! But Kristi thought he was the kind of guy who settled down. She cooked him dinner. Baked him apple-fucking-pies. Ironed his goddamn shirts and hung them in his closet.
The toilet flushes. He doesn’t wash his hands. And then he’s back in the bed, touching me with his dirty fingers. “And you get me.”
I pretend there are not microscopic splashes of urine on his fingertips when I rub his shoulder and kiss over his neck. I pretend the way he’s touching my pussy right now isn’t the same way he’s touched Kristi’s.
When he gets me naked and rubs his cock against me, I imagine I’m the only woman who has ever had him this way. Because if I don’t, I’ll grab the lamp from the nightstand and wrap the cord around his throat until he’s clawing at his neck and gasping for breath. I bet then he’d try to tell me I was the only woman he had ever loved, but I wouldn’t be able to hear him. I’d just be tugging and tugging on that cord until his lips turned a shiny purple.
“I want you,” I whisper and hook one of my legs around his waist.
Groaning, he nips at my neck and fists my hair before he slams inside me. No foreplay. No what do you need, babe? He just rams his pathetic cock inside me over and over.
He throws me around like a ragdoll, smacking my ass. He fucks me hard and rough.
Gage is like a feral animal, one I want to keep, and sometimes trapping a wild beast is the only way to ensure it doesn’t run away. With time and care and nurturing, almost anything can become domesticated.
Yes, a baby is the only way to make sure Gage won’t leave me. The only way to tie him to me forever.
Right when I can feel his muscles tense and his breath grow unsteady, I tighten my pussy and glance over my shoulder. “Just go in me.”
And he’s just stupid enough that he does.
Chapter 7
Three weeks later
The bathroom faucet drips while I sit on the edge of the tub and wait.
After a few minutes, I stand up and grab the stick, staring at the lack of a second line. My chest goes all heartbroken-tight, and I shake my head. “No!”
Gage has distanced himself lately. Only taking every other call. Only seeing me when he needs something. He’s too pretty to let go. Not to mention, the sweat equity I have put into keeping him is ridiculous. That would be like building half of the Taj Mahal and then just… walking away.
I chuck the stick into the trashcan, and it lands across the other three negative pregnancy tests I’ve taken. The faucet keeps dripping, and I just watch the drops fall, splashing into the basin. The sound—splat, splat, splat—mocks me, so I grab the plunger from beside the toilet and whack it over and over until the porcelain around the knob cracks.
Now a steady stream trickles out, but at least it’s not that repetitive fucking splat.
I busy myself around the house, waiting on Gage to call. Because he will. He’ll call me. There are no more Amandas or Kristis. No more blondes…
The alarm on my ovulation tracker dings, and I grab my phone in a panic.
Gage doesn’t answer. I hang up and call again. Still no answer. I text and text and text. I pull up Friend Finder on my phone and refresh the screen. The tracker indicates he’s at his house. My mind tumbles down a dark, black rabbit hole of worry.
Maybe he slipped in the shower and busted his head. I imagine him lying in a pool of his own blood, trying to reach the phone to tell me he loves me, and my heart skips critical beats. Gathering my purse and the key to his apartment he thinks he lost, I hurry out.
He should be happy I linked his Friend Finder to my phone and that I have this key I think when I buzz myself into his building. And if it weren’t for me trying to get pregnant behind his back, I wouldn’t have had an alarm set, and maybe I wouldn’t have been desperate enough to call and call and call. God, Gage, you should be glad I love you so much.
I shove the key in the lock. It clicks. I don’t bother to shut the door. I don’t have time.
My head grows woozy when I round the corner to his living room. I don’t know what I’ll do if I walk in and find him bled out on the bathroom floor, gripped within the untimely hold of death.
He groans, and I know he’s hurt. I know he is because that sounds pained and woeful and—
“Fuck me harder, Ashley.”
I freeze. Thump. Thump. Thump. Fucking thump. My pulse pounds in my temples, and the freight train rumble ripping through my ears is almost enough to drown out the awful creak of his bedsprings.
“Oh shit,” he pants. “You’re the best fuck I’ve ever had. You’re better than anyone else.”
My teeth gnash together, and I crack my neck because Gage just made liars out of us all. Out of me and Amanda and Hailey and Kristi and that other girl. They all said I was better. I believed them, but Ashley. Oh Ashley, Gage thinks you’re the best.
There’s a lamp just waiting on the table beside me. Fate.
I wrap my fingers around it and hold it out, ready to strike as I sneak down the hall. Ashley moans like a whore, and Gage growls. Calming my frantic breath, I peek around the doorframe.
There she is. Her blonde fucking hair tumbling down her bare back, swaying from side to side as she grinds over the cock that was made only for me. She doesn’t see it coming, and neither does he because he’s literally coming, eyes closed and jaw tight with his fingers dug into her dirty, fucking hips.
The porcelain of the lamp makes a crack—or maybe it’s her skull—when I whack her in the head. She goes down like a felled tree. I’ll still have to choke her with the cord I’m afraid, but for now, at least, she’s out of the way.
“What the…” Gage’s eyes go wide, and I can’t help but think how much prettier they are filled with fear.
He shoves Best Fuck Ashley’s unconscious body off him and scrambles off the bed. I go to chase after him, but I don’t have to go very far. He trips over Ashley’s shoes and falls headfirst into his dresser, bouncing off it like a pinball. Gage hits the ground with a thud, and I tsk when I bend down to inspect the deep gash in his forehead. I tsk, again. “That’s gonna leave a scar.”
Sighing, I kick her shoes out of the way. “That’s why I always put my shoes under the bed, Gage. Because I’m better than her.”
Luckily for Gage, I keep a little dose of Ketamine on me at all times, just in case one of his girls gets out of hand. Again. Fate. I don’t want him to be in pain, so I just jab the little syringe into his neck to give him a little nighty, night before I finish with Best Fuck Ever Ashley and dress Gage for our date.
Chapter 8
Gage
<
br /> My stomach lurches, and I wake in a cold sweat, my heart banging like a war drum in my chest. Ashley. Shit! The last thing I remember is crazy-ass Violet popping in the room and smashing Ashley’s head in with a lamp. My initial instinct is to run, but my body is so heavy. Everything is distorted, undefined shapes and smears of colors. I couldn’t move if I tried.
I can barely make out the sound of someone far away calling my name.
Something rough cuts into my wrists and ankles, and I feel exposed. Oh God, I’m naked. Restrained. I’ve woken up to. . . what? To find myself on an operating table? But at least that crazy bitch didn’t kill me.
“It’s okay.” Someone touches my face, and I feel at ease for a moment. “Baby,” Violet whispers. “It’s okay.”
Adrenaline fires through me, awakening my muscles, and suddenly, everything comes into focus. I’m facing the floor to ceiling windows of my cabin. I glance down, and panic buzzes through me because nothing that starts out with a guy tied to a chair naked ends well.
“Baby?” Violet sings before sitting on my lap and wrapping her arms around me. “How do you feel?” She shifts back on my thighs and grabs my dick, massaging it. “How is he feeling?”
I search for words, since “you’re fucking crazy” probably isn’t the best thing to say right now. I’ve watched enough CSI to know you have to play the looney person’s game if you want to survive. “I’m uh, a little groggy.”
“I’m sorry.” She pouts before crawling out of my lap and dropping to her knees beside the chair. Her lips slip around my flaccid cock. Her tongue circles me. Her head bobs up and down, and I fight so damn hard to get an erection. I fight because God knows what she’ll do if I don’t.
“Does that feel good, Gage?”
“Yeah. Yeah, babe.” I swallow. “Real, damn good.”
She works me over for a minute, and somehow, I manage to maintain a semi-hardon. When she stops, she pushes to her feet and shimmies out of her pants, then her thong. “You didn’t mean it, did you?” She tugs her shirt over her head, and her dark hair falls back around her face, popping against her porcelain skin.
“Mean what?”
“That she was the best fuck you’d had.” She frowns, and I damn near shit myself.
“Oh. God.” I laugh a laugh that’s not really a laugh. “No. No. I just, um— You know. That was a mistake.”
“What was?” She throws a leg over my lap and rubs her wet pussy over my dick.
“Doing that. I um— I just had a moment, and I-I—I’m sorry, Violet.”
“You promise?”
“Yes.”
She grabs my cock and squeezes so hard I wonder if that’s how she intends to kill me, by ripping off my dick and letting me bleed out. “I promise, baby.”
“No. Babe, Gage.” She arches her back. “I’m your babe.”
I nod so quickly that my neck pops. “Of course. Babe. I’m so, so sorry.”
Violet tilts her chin, letting a curtain of ebony hair cover half her face. “Do you love me?”
No. God, fucking no. I force a smile. “So much.”
Her hands snake up my neck, scratching through my hair. I wonder if she can see my heart pounding in my chest. I wonder what she’ll do if she picks up on my lies.
“Tell me.”
“I love you.” I spit that out like it’s fire in my mouth.
With a smile, her hands sink to my shoulders. She rolls her hips and then, I’m inside her. Closing my eyes, I drop my chin and breathe, thinking maybe, just maybe, if I fuck her and tell her I love her, she’ll let me go.
“I love you, Gage.”
“I love you.”
She snatches my chin up, forcing me to look at her. “Tell me I’m better than them.”
“You’re so much better, babe. So much better than anyone else.” I stare into her batshit-crazy, blue eyes, hoping she believes that.
“We’re fate, Gage. Fate, and there’s nothing you can do to stop fate.”
I take a breath. My jaw tenses from how hard she’s fucking me, how fast and rough.
“All I wanted them to know was how much we loved each other. That I’m your favorite. That I’m better.” She rolls her hips over and over until, against my own will, I come inside her. Jesus, talk about the issues I’ll have from this shit…
She leans in by my ear and nips at it. “Did you come?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” A few more thrusts and she throws her head back on a moan, her nails digging into my shoulders, and then she pushes off me with a smile. “You’ll be such a good father.”
My stomach slips around itself like a snake around a struggling rat, and I fight the acid crawling up my throat at the thought of fathering her demon spawn.
“I just need one more thing, and then I’ll set you free.”
My heart picks up its pace, and I nod over and over. “Okay. Whatever you need, babe.”
She grabs the back of the chair. The wooden legs scrape over the floorboards when she spins it around in one fell swoop.
My fingers twitch against the restraints. My stomach churns, and a silent scream works its way from my lungs.
Violet steps beside me with a deep frown set on her face. “Just tell them I’m better than them, Gage. Tell them I’m better for you.”
I gasp like a fish tossed on a hot pier, I can’t catch a breath. My gaze skips from girl to girl, the horror not fully able to set in.
Amanda and Katie and Hailey sit in chairs across from me. Their skin a sickly gray, lips swollen, cracked and blue, and all their blonde hair dyed bottled black.
“Tell them, Gage.” Her voice cracks. “Please.” She paces, tugging at her hair. Any second she’s going to lose it.
I wet my lips with my tongue, unable to pull my eyes away from the thousand-yard death stares aimed right at me, accusing me of this mess.
“She’s better.” It comes out a breathy whisper.
“They can’t hear you, baby.” Violet stops in front of Amanda and twirls a strand of hair around her finger.
Bile hits the back of my throat, and I swallow it down. I cough and cough. “Ahem. Ahem. Ahem.” I take a breath. “She’s better. She’s better than you.”
Violet grins like the Cheshire cat and claps her hands and skips to a little red wagon filled with glass jars. She plucks one up, the brownish-red goop inside sloshing around. “Now, tell Kristi.”
I don’t want to know. I’m not going to ask. Closing my eyes, I nod. “She’s better than you, Kristi.”
I open my eyes when Violet’s warm lips press to mine. “And you know what, Gage? I’m better than you,” she whispers.
Crack.
Epilogue
The early morning sun shines brightly over the endless cornfield as we barrel down the old country highway.
In an hour, we'll be at our old farmhouse deep in the countryside of Tennessee. Only us. Together. No more Amanda or Hailey or Kristi or Ashley or whatever that other girl’s name was.
It's a quaint little farmhouse in the middle of ten acres with a tin roof and large windows that look out over the Appalachian mountain ridge.
There's a nice little porch where we'll sit and drink our coffee each morning.
I let the top down on Gage’s 1967 vintage Mercedes, the sun gleaming over the red leather seats and chrome steering wheel.
"I can't wait to start the rest of our life together, babe. I really can't," I say, reaching over and threading my fingers through his.
The top clicks into place, and the wind blows through my hair. I push my Chanel sunglasses down over my eyes, wishing I'd thought to buy one of those floral print scarves to tie up my hair. He had mentioned how much he’d like that, and damn, this moment could have looked like a classic love story had I thought to do that.
"I feel I should tell you, my name’s not really Violet.”
He’s quiet, so I squeeze his hand a little harder to let him know it’s okay.
I’ve forgiven him because while h
e lied about all those girls, I lied about things too. “It’s Marisa. With one S.”
He doesn't say anything, and I glance over and smile.
He looks so perfect. His five o'clock shadow is cut into perfect lines. His thick hair I so love to run my fingers through blows carelessly in the wind. His lips are a lovely shade of blue, his tanned skin now a sickly pallor, but he’s still perfect because he’s mine.
"You don't have to say anything, honey. I know you are. You told me there was just something about me. That I was different. You told me I was better..."
I squeeze his hand, his fingers cold and rigid. "Oh, no. You have something on your face.” And like the perfect girlfriend, I wet my finger with my tongue and wipe the tiny bit of blood splatter from his cheek. "There. All better."
The End. Sort of. . .
Author’s Note
If you would like to follow Marisa with one S, check out White Pawn by Stevie J. Cole (S.J. Cole)
About SJ Cole
Stevie J. Cole (writing as SJ Cole), a Goodreads Choice Award Finalist 2016, lives deep in the woods of Alabama with her sexy husband and two precious daughters. She has an obsession with penguins and English chocolate and is terrified of clowns.
Her solo books offer you all the feels you've come to love in a warm, pretty romance with happily ever afters, while her SJ Cole books and her co-authored books with LP Lovell take you on a thrilling ride of suspense and danger, sometimes with a nice little kick of love.
Also by Stevie
White Pawn
The game’s not over until the king is dead.
Absolution
I became his sinner and he became my sin.
Bad
True Power is never held by good men.