by Rina Kent
The fuck? Did I leave it open?
Admittedly, I’d already had three glasses of wine — some really decent red — before remembering I wanted to submerge myself in a mountain range of bubbles.
I gulp at the wine and set it back on the rim. Breaking off another block of chocolate from the slab, I slip it into my mouth.
“Mmmm, mmm, mmmmm.”
Kill other motherfuckers, kill them fucking dead.
My foot resumes its splash-tapping.
When I take another sip of wine, another breeze slides over my damp arm.
I glance at the door and freeze.
The wind’s pushed it open almost a foot.
“Fuck…” I groan. There’s no way in hell I’m getting out of this deliciousness to close the door. Marigold texted me earlier to let me know she had a prior engagement tonight; I have the house to myself.
I squirm in the tub, and take out my earbuds. Heavy metal is awesome if you want to get rid of residual frustration, but porn is even better.
Marigold would probably never be caught dead with something as radical as wi-fi in her home, but I got a good data deal with my mobile back when Mom—
I gulp at my wine, and rest the goblet on my tummy as I flick through the thumbnails on the first porn site that came up when I googled ‘nasty rough sex’.
Yup, I’m a freak like that. Then again, who isn’t?
“There we go,” I murmur.
At a creak behind me, I twist in the tub fast enough to send a wave of rose-scented suds over the side.
I’m tempted to say, “Hello?”
I burst out laughing at the thought and sink back into the bubbles.
The wind, Indi. It’s the fucking wind, you paranoid freak.
I drain the rest of my wine glass and set it down on the rim. The last block of chocolate goes into my mouth, and my free hand slips under the bubbles.
My back arches as my fingers make contact with my clit. I circle that sensitive nub of flesh, goosebumps breaking over my skin.
“Mmm.” The chocolate’s melting in my mouth, and that’s elevating everything to the nth fucking degree.
I slide a finger inside myself, closing my eyes and resting my head back on the rim as warm water tickles its way deep inside me.
I juggle the phone, almost drop it in the water, and let it fall on the bathroom mat instead. Fuck it, I don’t need porn to get off. I’m full of red wine, and chocolate, and all I need is…
Briar’s blue eyes fill my mind.
The feel of his strong, soft lips against mine.
His big hands on my throat—no, wait, that was Marcus, wasn’t it?— fuck it, his hands on my throat…
“Mmmmmm.” My back arches, and water splashes around me as I spread my legs as wide as they can go in the confines of the tub.
It’s not wide enough.
I drag myself out of the water, shivering when cold air hits my wet skin, and perch on the rim of the tub.
Much better. I hold onto the rim with one hand, using the other to massage my clit. The door creaks, but I’m too far gone to be bothered with the chill factor right now. Although my nipples have pebbled into rock hard buds and I’m covered in goosebumps, this feels way too good to stop.
I climax a few seconds later, my entire body stiffening so much I almost end up on the bathroom mat.
I let out a long sigh, and giggle to myself as I realize what a fucking mess I’ve made. Well, luckily, I have this big bath of bubbles right—
I hear the sound of a car coming up the drive.
Fuck, Marigold’s home already? What time is it?
I twist, and in that precise moment, Marigold must hit a bump in the road. Headlamps shine right through the bathroom window as I stand and turn to grab a towel.
There’s someone standing in the doorway, watching me.
I scream, and immediately clap my hands over my mouth in surprise.
The headlamps move, and the hallway outside the bathroom door is once again in shadow.
I hear a key in the door, and my body freezes. I expect to hear Marigold demanding to know who’s in her house, because no way was there enough time for the guy who’d been standing in the doorway watching me — watching me — to have gotten downstairs fast enough.
Unless he’s still in the house.
“Granny!” I shriek, grabbing the towel and wrapping it around me as I rush for the hallway.
Yeah, I’ll be the first to die in any horror movie ever made. But I saw that shape move — whoever it was, they didn’t want to be seen. I doubt they’d be waiting right outside the door.
“Indigo?” comes Marigold’s voice from downstairs. “Why on earth are you yelling at me?”
I run to the far end of the hall and begin throwing open doors. He could have gone in any direction, but it makes more sense that he’d head away from the stairs and try and get out through one of the windows.
But every room is empty, and feels slightly stale; no one’s been in them for a while.
When I open my bedroom door, I immediately know he was in here. My space feels different. My sanctum defiled by a stranger’s presence.
My window’s open, and I know I should run to it and look outside to catch a glimpse of the invader, but I’m rooted to the spot, watching the lace curtain shifting in a breeze.
“Indigo?” Marigold calls from the stairs.
I only saw him for a second, and the light cast strange shadows on his face and leeched all the color from his skin. But I could have sworn it was Briar standing there in the hallway, lips parted, eyes wide.
He’d been pushing open the bathroom door, not the wind.
Watching me.
Watching me.
Briar
I sprint for the tree line, not bothering to look over my shoulder. If she were to look out her window, she’ll see me way before I reach the safety of wood’s shadowy ground, and I don’t need to give her a good look at my face too.
Why the fuck didn’t I leave?
The fuck did I decide to stay and watch her bathing for?
As soon as darkness swallows me, I falter and stop running. My breath is coming fast, but I’m nowhere near winded. That’s not the problem. The problem is I have a hard-on that’s causing me immense fucking grief.
I slam my back into a tree and shove my hands into my hair.
Keep running, you fucking cunt. Don’t let her get to you.
But for fuck’s sake, how’s that possible? I can’t get the sight of her wet, naked body out of my damn mind.
I don’t know what I’d expected to see under her clothes.
She’s fucking perfect.
Nothing like the bulimic skeletons attending Lavish Prep.
She has curves and a pair of perky tits I was aching to grab.
Fuck, I have grabbed them before, but through all those clothes, I had no idea how magnificent they truly were.
And she shaves…everywhere.
My cock throbs, and I grimace as I try to fight off each new wave of lust crashing through me.
It was like I was in a trance, back there. I’d had one hand on my cock, throttling it through my jeans as if that would somehow control the dark, savage urges flooding my body.
It hadn’t helped.
Fuck.
Fuck!
If someone hadn’t arrived…
I was seconds away from stepping into that bathroom and claiming Indi for my own. No more of this fucking around. I wanted to pin her to the bathroom floor and fuck her until she begged me to stop — and then screamed my name when she came.
I wanted to leave marks even more marks on her pale body, on those glorious curves of her.
My eyes flash open, and I stare reluctantly at my cock where I have it in a fist.
What the fuck is this girl doing to me?
I stroke myself once, with every intention of shoving my dick back into my pants.
But once is never enough, is it?
My arm trembles as I try to
hold back, but then I remember how Indi threw back her head and moaned as she came, absolutely gorgeous as she fell apart.
I groan, and let the torrent of lust that’s been building since I first saw her slender foot tapping on the side of the bath wash over me.
I stroke my cock slow and hard, urging precum from the crown so I can use it for lube.
How fucking long has it been?
I don’t allow myself this pleasure, not after what happened with Jess. The more I feed this wretched beast, the hungrier it gets. The stronger it gets. And the less likely it becomes that I’ll be able to keep it chained up.
The forest swallows my next groan as I speed up my rhythm.
Indi’s mouth.
My fuck, what I wouldn’t do to have it over my cock right now. Sucking. Her tongue sliding along my shaft. Those fierce green eyes glaring up at me.
She’d try to bite me.
But what if…
I’m getting close now, my back arching away from the tree.
What if she didn’t have a choice?
She’d have to swallow every drop of my cum, and tell me that she loves how it tastes. That she wants more.
Fuck.
I come with a deep-throated growl.
In my mind, Indi’s mouth opens wide, and I empty myself on her tongue while her eyes glitter with hateful tears.
I sprint home, dodging trees and brambles best I can. If the ground hadn’t been this cold, it wouldn’t have numbed my soles to the point where I could run.
I left my shoes behind. But I can’t go back. Not now. They’d be on high alert. Hopefully, no one will look behind the shrub where I left them. If they do, then I’m pretty fucked.
I keep pushing, pushing, pushing.
The euphoria’s long gone. And although I try to outrun the rest, it follows me as doggedly as my fucking shadow.
First comes the shame. It burns through me in an incandescent wave.
Next; guilt. Heavy, leaden, it drags down my feet and makes my body ten times heavier than it should be. My sprint becomes a slow jog.
Lastly, always…anger.
It eviscerates my reservations, logic.
Every fucking thing.
All I want — need — is to break her…even if I can’t put her back together again. Then that beautiful, broken girl will be all mine.
I like broken things, but I love breaking them even more.
Chapter Seventeen
Indi
I eventually do find remnants of an earlier, happier time in Marigold’s house. For reasons I can’t quite explain to myself yet, I don’t tell her about the intruder. Instead, I claim I saw a spider terrifying enough to make me run wet and partially naked from the bathroom.
She went to bed still wearing a grimace. That had been for the almost empty bottle of wine she spotted in the kitchen though, not my tale of arachnophobic horror.
Briar’s blue eyes kept me awake for an hour before I abandoned the concept of sleep altogether.
Intent on getting some warm milk, I head down to the kitchen. I walk past a hallway that heads to the back of the house, one Marigold never bothered to include in her initial tour. I always thought the room went to a study or a smaller sitting room, perhaps, so I never even bothered investigating.
The door’s locked. But there’s a hallway closet nearby I hadn’t seen before. I open the closet and rummage through the shelves.
I find a few photo albums and some dilapidated sporting equipment — a baseball bat and mitts, faded roller skates, a scratched bicycle helmet.
Weighing the bat in my hand, I purse my lips at its solidity. Then I grasp it tight and take a swing at an invisible enemy.
Not a bad self-defense weapon. Good to keep close at hand, should a certain Prince decide to sneak into my fucking house again. Fuck knows if I’d even use it. I should at least pretend that the fact that he’s not just a rapist and a murderer, but a creeping tom to boot, scares the living shit out of me.
Because it really should.
Somehow though, it doesn’t.
I guess after all the shit life’s dealt me recently, a run-in with a young Ted Bundy seems tame in comparison.
Briar
Marcus’s SUV is still out front when I finally get home. Inside, the mansion is quiet as the grave.
I find him in the pool house, immersing himself in weed and video games. He doesn’t even hear me come in — with such a dank haze in the room it doesn’t surprise me at all.
There’s beer inside the fridge — I take out two cans and bring them over to the sofa.
Marcus twitches when I move into his peripheral view, and then pauses his game and settles back on the sofa as if getting ready for battle.
I hold out the can until he takes it, and then I lower myself onto the seat with a sigh.
Marcus scans me with black, unreadable eyes, pops open his can, and says, “The fuck happened to your shoes?”
I laugh and wave away the question. Taking a sip of beer, I sit forward and grab a joint roach from the ashtray. I’m still hunting for a lighter when Marcus holds out a hand and flicks on his Zippo.
“Look, man, about earlier…” I trail off, expecting him to stop me, but he just watches with dead eyes and a line for a mouth.
“Yeah?” he prompts after a few seconds.
“I’m sorry.”
He shrugs. “Told you, that girl’s got you fucking obsessed.” He narrows his eyes. “Where’ve you been?”
“Sorry, love, I meant to call,” I say dryly. “Time just got away from me.”
He snorts and returns to his game. “You met up with her, didn’t you?”
I turn to him, wide-mouthed with disbelief. “The fuck, Mar—?”
“Did you at least fuck her this time, get it out of your system?”
I don’t know if it’s because I still have way too much alcohol in my system, but déjà vu slams into me like a glass door.
Just fuck Jess and get her out of your system already.
Marcus had said that right after I told him that I had feelings for her.
When I don’t reply, he glances at me and then does a double take. Throwing down the game controller without bothering to pause this time, he says, “Tell me I’m wrong,” while cocking his head at me.
“I’ve known her for less than a week.” It’s a shitty defense, especially since he knows I liked Jessica from the moment I saw her, but it’s all I got.
“Well she’s obviously set off some kind of fucked-up chemical response in your brain.” Marcus grabs his dime bag of weed and starts rolling another joint, his eyes flickering up to me every other second as if to make sure I don’t launch myself at him while his attention is diverted. “That’s the only rational explanation, isn’t it?”
“That’s not—”
“You want the same thing to happen to Indi?”
Now he’s staring solid at me. For a moment, I don’t know what the fuck he means. Is he talking about the rape or the murder?
Cold fury bubbles inside me.
“I never asked you to do anything.”
“Yeah?” Marcus runs his tongue along the joint and then slips it through his lips in one movement. “Guess I should just have let her go to the police. Testify against you in court. You’d have done hard time, you know that, right?”
I swallow, but it’s as if all that guilt is stuck right there in my throat. “You didn’t have to—”
“But I did, bro, because that’s what friends do!” Marcus stands in a rush, toking hard at the joint before stabbing it in my direction. “We look out for each other. And I’m telling you, this chick’s gonna get you in a world of fucking trouble. Think the fact she’s buddies with Addison is a coincidence? Addy’s been looking for a way back into your life for months now. She’s got that chick wrapped around her finger.”
“Addy doesn’t have any proof.”
“’Course she doesn’t,” Marcus says. I look up at him, and ignore the joint he’s holding o
ut to me. “’Cos I made it all disappear, remember?”
His head tilts to the side, eyes so dead they could have been chips of coal.
Is he seriously expecting me to thank him? I’d been in such a state after Jess left Marcus’s house that afternoon, when he came and told me that she’d jumped off the bridge at Angel Falls, I’d broken down like a fucking baby.
For three months, I’d been hanging out with Marcus, going to school with him, letting him stay over at my house when his dad was in town.
Three months before I found out the truth about Jessica’s death.
Just goes to show how deviant I am. When he did tell me, instead of beating him up and dragging him to the police station, I said nothing.
I’ve never said anything to anyone.
Because that’s what friends do.
I won’t thank him. What he did was wrong. Just like what I did was fucking inexcusable. But we keep each other’s secrets like best friends should.
It doesn’t explain why I keep thinking he wants to screw me over.
“You’re right,” I say, nodding slowly. Marcus takes a slow drag of the joint, watching me with unveiled suspicion.
I hold up my hand, palm facing him. “No, seriously, you are. This chick’s gotten into my head.”
The simple truth.
“If she stays in there much longer then no, I don’t think I’ll be able to control myself.”
Marcus nods, hitting the joint again.
“So we stick to our plan,” I say.
“We get rid of her.”
I don’t like the sound of that, so I add, “We’ll turn Lavish Prep into her own personal hell. She’ll be begging her parents to send her back.”
Marcus smiles around the joint and sticks out his hand.
I grab it, squeeze it, shake it.
Then I take the joint from him and lift my eyebrows as my eyes slide to the game controller. “Duo?”
“Yeah, sure.” He grabs the spare controller off the game console and brings it to me.
I watch him as he sits, and can’t help but shake my head in reluctant admiration.