by Logan Fox
So I moved the couch across the room. That took a while, because it’s really fucking heavy. Not much of a cardio workout, but at least I got some strength training in.
Then I stripped the bed sheets and arranged them to hang over the back of the couch and tucked them into the foot of the mattress.
Et voila! Instant two-hour-ish blanket fort.
I should patent this shit.
There were a lot of pillows on the bed. They make up the fort’s floor. Then I went into the fort.
That was hours ago.
I had a nap. Woke up. Had another. I bit off all my nails, and even considered trying to see if I was limber enough to do the same for my toes. I decided against it because, well, hygiene.
And really, once you start biting off your toenails, where do you draw the line? Not anywhere near fist-sized dildos, that’s for sure.
I’d sooner try the bedsheet noose.
When Cillian wrenches open the metal door, my heart flutters into my throat like a baby swallow…and then perches there waiting to see what’ll happen.
I shouldn’t be giddy with excitement, but in case I haven’t been blatantly clear…I’m fucking bored. Right now he is literally my entire world.
It should scare me that, instead of panic, I only feel joy. But maybe I’ve already lost the panic-centers of my mind to this boredom-induced madness.
“The fuck have you gone and done?” he grates, but in the kind of tone that makes me think he’s more intrigued than pissed off. I huddle into a ball in the back of the blanket fort, hugging my knees as I shiver with nerves.
His footsteps come closer. “Meisie? Get out here.”
“You don’t like it?” My heart sinks a little at that. “It took me all day.”
“I’m sure it did, princess, but I need to talk to you.”
“Then you’ll have to come inside,” I say. “Because it sounds serious and I’m sure you want to do it face to face.”
I clap a hand over my mouth. Why am I struggling to keep back hysterical giggles? God, I’m really losing my shit.
Maybe it’s the image of giant, serious-as-fuck Cillian crawling into my blanket fort. But he doesn’t sound all that serious. Especially when he lets out a low chuckle.
I shiver when his hand presses down into the roof of my fort, his fingertips making dents in the fabric.
“This thing’s flimsy as fuck,” he says. “I made better forts than this when I was five.”
“So come show me how it’s done.”
His fingertips disappear.
I strain to hear him moving, but I think he’s just standing there. I guess Mr. Serious is back. I pout a little at the thought.
What the fuck were you expecting, Meisie? Or did you forget that he fucking kidnapped you?
He’s lied to you.
He’s hurt you.
He’s…
Kissed me.
Respected my boundaries.
And he’s spoken to me like I was a real person, not just some girl living in her mother’s shadow.
But the kiss was probably just him blowing off some steam. Who’s to say he’s not waiting to pounce on me when I least—
Cillian appears at the mouth of my fort like a fucking assassin. One minute I’m staring drearily out at the drapes on the far side of the room through the narrow tunnel of bed sheets and blankets, the next he fills that space.
He tears toward me, and I burst into a fit of shrieking giggles as I try to evade the hand reaching for me.
“Come here, princess,” he growls, but there’s a mischievous gleam in his eyes.
“You have to catch me fir—” I cut off with a hoarse yell when he somehow grabs hold of my ankle. I fall onto my stomach, wriggling furiously to try and get away from him. But a wave of debilitating giggles overwhelms me, leaving me too weak to fight him when he crashes into my fort and tugs me closer.
There’s barely enough space for both of us—he’s on his side, still gripping my ankle, and I’m on my belly, leopard crawling for the exit as I squeal like a pig.
“Where do you think you’re going, young lady?” he demands.
I can’t answer—I’m laughing too hard.
So he bites into my calf. Not hard enough to draw blood, but enough that I yelp in surprise and fall onto my back, kicking out at him.
“Get over here.” He grabs my other ankle and yanks me to his side with one pull of his strong arms.
I try and scramble away, but the pillows are all covered with satin sleeves.
“Are you done?” he asks, but with one eyebrow quirked and a faint curve to his lips.
“Because if you’re not—”
I don’t wait to find out what he says. I’ve had like twenty naps today, so I can go all night. I flip over onto my tummy and wriggle for the exit again.
“Meisie!” He grabs my shirt in a hand and yanks me back.
“No!” I burst out laughing again.
“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” he says.
I don’t know which is louder—the slap he plants on my ass, or the gasp of surprise I let out. Hair flies into my face as I whip around to stare at him in shock. “Did you just…?”
He holds up the same hand, and I realize he’s breathing almost as hard as I am. “Want another?”
He gets his answer when I bark out a laugh and make a go for the exit again.
“Fuuuuck.”
The next slap is twice as hard. I’m so shocked at the flash of pain that I stop moving altogether. But I guess my punishment is exponential, because he spanks me again, and again, and—
“Peaches!” I yelp, twisting onto my back and holding up my hands. “Fuck, peaches!” Tears pour down my cheeks, but I have no idea if they’re from laughing, or the spanking, or a fucked up mix of the two.
There’s less than a foot between us. He’s still on his side, me on my back. Satin beneath us, Egyptian cotton above.
So it’s no fucking wonder that, when he leans closer, I think he’s going to kiss me.
But he leaves me hanging. And when I open my eyes, he’s staring at me with an expression I’ve never seen on his face before.
Regret?
About what? Spanking me? I’d never tell him in a million years, but although it hurt like hell—fuck, it still does—I liked it. Not the pain. Who likes pain? I don’t know what I liked about it.
Maybe I am going a bit crazy. Huh—maybe I’ve always been and I’m only now starting to—
“I’m going to marry you,” he says.
I blink up at him.
“Um…” I let out a soft laugh. “I’m sorry. I think you literally just spanked all the sense out of me.”
He doesn’t laugh. He doesn’t even smile.
“Did you just say—?”
“Two weeks from now. You’ll wear white. I’m traditional like that. And a garter. Veil—” he glances away for a second. “Your choice. We’re having it in a castle. It’s nice, but freezing—so don’t be walking down the aisle in something flimsy and moan that you’re cold.”
I laugh again. Louder. Possibly even hysterically. Then I slap him on a pec. “You know, you’re not half bad when you’re pretending to be a decent human being.” I wave a finger at him. “But this is a bit too much. Just reel it in a tad, and you’re golden.”
Gone is any trace of brevity. His eyes are the color of a shadowy forest now, his mouth a firm, unwavering line.
“It won’t be intimate. There’ll be a shit ton of press and guests and friends of friends.” He leans a little closer, his gaze pinning me where I lay. “But no family, except mine. Your mother? She can see it on the news, like the rest of the country. Understand?”
I die a thousand little deaths.
My joy at him coming down the stairs? Dead.
The swallow in my throat? Already stiff.
The tiny piece of my heart he’d commanded? Already bloated with putrefaction.
“What?” I hear myself say, and I hate it. I hate the path
etic, whining little voice that comes out of me. I hate the fact that I’m waiting for the punchline. That I’m somehow still convinced that he’s going to crack a smile and give me another resounding slap on the butt.
Tell me, Meisie, when did the delusion that Cillian cared for you begin? Trish asks. And then she waits, long nails poised over that fucking iPad.
I dunno.
How does any delusion begin?
There’s a moment when things shift. When there’s a change. I guess it’s all a matter of perspective, huh?
Because, for me, that change was good.
But, I guess, for him…maybe there was no change. No fucking moment.
Cillian was just playing a game all along.
With me.
With my feelings.
With my motherfucking heart.
Stringing me along like a fish that just refuses to stop fighting. Reeling me in with his eyes and his kindness and his magnetic self—
Fuck it. I punch him in the fucking throat.
And then I yell something wordless and primal as I truly—truly—scamper the fuck out of my fort.
He reaches me by the time I’m halfway up the stairs. I guess I finally did some damage because he makes a rattling sound as he grabs me around the waist and hoists me into the air.
“Fuck you!” I shriek.
I don’t hold back. This time, when I struggle, the fury of my entire nineteen years of pain and humiliation and suffering is behind every blow.
So when I get a strike into something soft—belly, groin, does it matter?—the ferocious growl he lets out sends a signal to the little fluffy thing inside me.
FIGHT!
He reels back, his balance momentarily gone, and I take full advantage. Instead of going for the door, I go for him.
It’s pathetic, how easily he grabs my wrists and stops my clawed hands inches from his face. Even winded, off-balance, he’s a better fighter than I’ll ever be.
Because I’ve spent my entire life agreeing, agreeing, agreeing!
There’s a moment, like that instant when the scales are perfectly balanced, where we just stare at each other like the mortal enemies we both know we are.
No more games.
No more pretending.
“You can’t change this,” he murmurs as he scans my face. “So why do you keep fighting?”
And just like that, the scale keeps tipping. The universe exhales. I try and ram my shoulder into him, doing anything I can to bring him pain.
And Cillian?
What does he do?
He picks me up like a toy his kid left on the carpet. And he takes me over to the bare-stripped bed. And he tosses me down so hard that, when I bounce, I cut the inside of my lip with my teeth.
He reaches for me. To restrain me, to slap me, to fuck me—I don’t know.
But I lash out at him with a foot.
He holds up his hands, his jaw ticking. “Meisie—”
“Don’t fucking touch me!” I scream.
“Stop pretending that you have—”
I kick out at him again, baring my teeth like a wild animal.
He laughs.
He fucking laughs. And then he tilts his head and studies me like I’m the newest addition to the zoo and he doesn’t know why the hell I’m being so unruly with my pen mates.
Slowly, he sinks onto the side of the bed. When I go stiff and show him my curled up fists, he holds up his hands again.
“Just listen, would you?”
“Fuck you!”
“Just…” he looks away and mutters something I don’t catch. When he looks at me again, the mask is back. Not a shred of emotion in his eyes. “This is long overdue,” he says.
I yell when he grabs me, but it doesn’t matter how hard I fight, he lifts me off the bed and carries me to the stairs.
“Let’s take a walk, shall we?”
Our walk ends at the closed double-doors on the second floor of this mansion I’ve been trapped in. Cillian sets me down and I quickly put a foot of distance between us—
But he grabs the back of my neck and just reels me the fuck back in again.
“I won’t work as a shield,” I tell him. “They’ve still got a clean shot of your head.”
“That’s one, Meisie.” Without warning, the flat of his hand connects with my ass. A loud slap rings out, and I buck forward with a yelp. If he hadn’t been holding my neck, I might have been able to glare at him over my shoulder. Instead, I just have to trot in front of him like a good little soldier when he opens the door and walks me inside.
I’m vaguely aware of metallic blinds, a glass-and-chrome desk, and a flat-screen television blaring at full blast on the opposite wall.
“Christ,” Cillian mutters, releasing the back of my neck as he surges past me. “Turn that shit down, would you?”
He grabs a control from the edge of the chrome desk, spins, and stabs at a button.
Silence floods the study.
The guy behind the desk doesn’t seem to give a fuck. Then again, unless I’m seeing things, there’s a ghostly line of coke trails on the glass in front of him, so maybe he’s too high to even notice.
But then the man behind the desk swivels on his chair and we lock eyes across the thick gray carpet.
Which is when I realize he definitely gives a shit about a lot of things.
Trust me, you do not want to fuck with my brother.
I do a double take, frowning first at him, then at Cillian as the latter turns in my direction to put the control down on the desk.
“We were watching that,” a soft voice says. I didn’t even notice the blond-haired girl sitting in one of the armchairs closer to the television.
“The fuck is she doing here?” Cillian says, directing the question at his brother. “I thought I made very fucking clear she—”
“Well, look at you,” the man says, ignoring Cillian and staring at me. I tug self-consciously at the hem of my shirt dress. Now the girl’s looking over at me too, brown eyes going wide as if she recognizes me.
Cillian glances in my direction. He frowns, but only for a millisecond, and then stabs a thumb over his shoulder.
“Cole, Meisie. Meisie, Cole.”
Cole gets to his feet, a wide smile on his mouth. He comes around the side of the desk, wiping his palms on his pants before tucking his thumbs into his pockets.
“Miss Ford,” Cole says, oozing…well I guess it’s supposed to be charm. “The pleasure is all mine.”
Yeah, I don’t doubt it. I cringe when he steps forward and sticks out a hand and instead hastily take a step back. My eyes fly to Cillian.
I know neither of us are psychic. I don’t believe in any of that crap. But when we lock eyes and I beg him—fucking beg him—to get me out of here, something has to reach him because he’s suddenly standing a little straighter, his jaw a little tighter than before.
“Not as chatty as you made her out to be,” Cole says through a laugh. He plucks his hand away, and heads back behind the desk, ripping open a desk drawer and rummaging with sudden urgency inside it. “Care for a line or two? Nothing like some blow to liven up your life, amiright?”
I’m still staring at Cillian.
But he drops his eyes, a tiny frown popping up between his dark eyebrows. “Tell her,” he says.
“Manners, Kill,” Cole croons from his chair as he takes it for a literal spin before coasting to a stop by his previous coke lines. “When’s the last time you shared a line with your brother?”
Brothers. Yes, I remember now.
“You’re twins?”
Both their heads snap to face me. The girl puts a hand over her mouth and giggles—not at me, I don’t think, but at their reactions.
Yeah, in that moment, it’s kinda fucking obvious, but…
God, I’m seconds away from a straitjacket and a permanent string of drool swinging from one corner of my mouth, aren’t I? Their faces are identical, and I missed it?
Sure, there’s the
little things.
The maniacal gleam in Cole’s eyes, compared with Cillian’s cold, calculating stare.
But seriously?
They even have the same fucking haircut.
Cole sits back in his seat, dropping the hand holding the little baggie of white powder in his lap as if his nerves stopped working. “You for fucking real?” he asks, but in the kind of voice that you know he’s not really expecting an answer.
Cillian pushes away from the desk he’d been leaning against and stands to one side, waving a hand from me to his brother.
His twin.
“Go on. Tell her.”
But Cole’s just staring at me, his drugs suddenly forgotten.
What? What did I do?
That’s when Cole studies me.
And, dear God, my skin crawls. It’s like Cole’s peeling away the shirt Cillian gave to me wear. I can practically feel his hands on me, touching me everywhere, despite how hard I scream inside my head.
Which is when the walls start closing in.
My chest snaps closed like one of those treasure chests in the bottom of a cheap aquarium.
No oxygen for Meisie.
The dark edges of the room swarm closer, those shadows reaching with wicked sharp claws, ready to tear away my clothes, my skin, my flesh, my virginity.
And at the center is Cole.
Crazy eyes in a manic mask.
I sway back, but Cillian’s already there to steady me. “Meisie,” he says.
Not, are you okay?
Not, what’s wrong?
Just, Meisie. Because we both know I’m not okay. We both know this is wrong. I shouldn’t be here. Maybe I should never have been here.
But now that Cole’s seen me…now that I’m on his radar…
Dimly, I hear the girl say something like, “Is she okay?” but it’s all just background noise compared to the buzz flooding my ears.
Cillian grabs me in a fierce hug, so tight that what little air I had in my lungs whooshes out. It should be suffocating, terrifying, mortifying…
It’s not. It’s comforting. When I’m wrapped in his strong arms, nothing can hurt me. Just for a moment, I’m untouchable too.
My toes curl into the carpet. The walls retreat. Cillian releases me.
Cole flicks his bag of good feels onto the table and stands, stretching like a lazy cat.