23. TWENTY THREE
TWENTY THREE
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The cold air bit at my legs, slipping under the edge of his black sweater that only managed to warm my upper body. My arm still hurt from the fresh wound; I hadn't noticed until now that blood was still dripping down. I turned to look at him. His chestnut hair, icy blue eyes that saw too much, the sharp lines of his face that softened only when he smiled. His beard scratched against my cheek when we were close, I couldn't get enough of it. With him, everything else faded. How could something so real disappear in just a day?
They say love makes you lose yourself, your brain floats up into the clouds, forgetting everything that once seemed so important. Maybe that's true, or maybe I was just caught up in the way he made me feel.People say love weakens you, but I felt stronger than ever.
Mel was okay, Joe and Laura, were gone. I didn't ask why or how. Somehow, it was easier not to know. The silence left space to pretend.
He stepped closer, his arms sliding around me before I could react. He lifted me onto his back, making me yelp in surprise. His hand came down against my bare skin, spanking me.
"Ready, Mrs. Karlsson?" he teased, his voice light.
"Karlsson?" I chuckled. "Did you do something I don't remember?"
His laugh was warm, rolling through the cold as he carried me to the front door, opened it, and set me down. His hands cupped my face, his touch grounding me.
"Not yet," he said with a soft growl.
I wasn't afraid. I wasn't drowning in thoughts of what could go wrong or what had already happened. I just existed, here and now. My mind, usually dark and chaotic, felt quiet. Not empty, but peaceful. I wasn't just fine, I was okay. That alone felt so real.
I laughed under my breath, my fingers brushing against my lips as the memory of last night flickered through my mind. The way his body moved with mine, the way he left me trembling, wanting for more.
"You coming?" His voice pulled me back to the present. He was waiting near the staircase. When he caught me openly staring, he arched an eyebrow and walked toward me.
Before I could say anything, he scooped me up again, throwing me over his shoulder.
"You know I can walk, right?"
"I know," he said, laughing as he landed another smack on my ass.
He carried me up the stairs, the glass railings reflecting fragments of our steps as we moved. The black and white tiled floors in the hallway blurred together as we passed, hypnotizing me. The house was modern, and clean, but layered with something raw. Animal pelts draped over chairs, skulls, and old guns hung like forgotten memories on the walls.
At the end of the hall, a nearly invisible door blended seamlessly into the white walls. He pushed it open and stepped into a bedroom where a circular bed held a court in the middle, its frame made from polished marble as white as fresh snow that covered the ground outside. Windows stretched from floor to ceiling, circling the room, revealing an uninterrupted view of snow-covered meadows and dense woodlands.
"It's beautiful," I said quietly, my hand finding its place against his chest. "Your home is beautiful."
"Ours," he corrected, pulling me closer. His voice dropped as he whispered, "Our home is beautiful. Just like you."
His words wrapped around me, words I was not used to. If they could melt the snow outside, I would have let them melt me, too. He was so kind to me, despite the pain he carried. He still found ways to build something beautiful. And somehow, I was part of it.
But I knew his pain, and that kind of pain had carved itself into me so deeply that I couldn't separate it from who I was. But with him, this pain was bearable, real.
I was falling for him. For aman so cold, a man who lived his life in the dark but made space for me in his light. A man who killed for me. And I know, without question, I would let myself die for him, too.
He moved to a shelf by the wall, where an old radio was. As he turned the button, his voice crackled, and he stood there, listening.
"We can positively confirm that the primary suspect in the investigation is an ex-detective named Isak Storm."
The voice on the radio made my stomach drop.
I turned to him, his name already slipping out in a shaky breath. "Thor? What's going on?"
He didn't answer.
His hand shot out, twisting the radio knob to silence it. He stood there, shoulders low, jaw clenched, his silence pressing against my chest.
"Did you blame it on him?" I asked, my voice steadier than I felt.
He didn't look at me, didn't move. My heart was pounding, and I took a step closer, pushing him lightly. "Thor, did you?"
Still nothing.
"Answer me!" My voice cracked as I pushed him again, harder this time.
Finally, he lifted his head, meeting my eyes.
"I did. He pretended to be me to get close to you. Don't you think he deserves to pay for that?"
I froze.
I didn't even know how to respond.
He wasn't lying; I knew that much. But he wasn't telling the whole truth either.
Isak wasn't Snowman, Thor was. Thor knew it. I knew it. And still, he stood there, as though nothing about this situation was twisted or wrong.
"It's not right," I said, pushing him again. My hands trembled, but I didn't stop. "You can't just… you can't live with this, and you know it."
"Would you rather it be me?"
His voice rose, anger bleeding into each word he spat. "Is that what you want? To see me behind bars?"
"No!" My hands pressed flat against his chest, and I pushed again, tears stinging my eyes. "How could you even think of that?"
I kept pushing him, words tumbling out. "Do you think I could stand that? Watching you waste away because of this? Because of him?"
My fists beat against his chest now, anger rising inside me. He staggered back, and his back hit the wall with a dull thud.
Above him, a deer skull with sprawling antlers hung on the wall. The force of his body knocked it loose, and it fewn, landing hard against his leg. He shouted in pain, dropping to one knee. I rushed toward him, but he didn't look at me.
His eyes were locked on the skull, his chest heaving as he stared at it. His breathing slowed, then deepened, the sound growing heavier each second.
"Thor?" I said, kneeling next to him.
He didn't answer.
His fingers reached for the skull, shaking slightly as he picked it up.
"Thor, stop," I pleaded, but he wasn't listening. He was somewhere else.
Slowly, he pulled the antlers up to his face, twisting off the wood mount at the back. I watched, frozen, as he placed the skull over his head.
The empty lifeless sockets stared back at me.
"Thor?" My voice trembled.
I staggered to my feet. He turned to me, the antlers swaying as he moved.
Thor I knew was gone. All that was left was this… thing.
"Thor, please." My voice cracked, but he didn't respond.
He stepped forward, tilting his head like he was scanning me.
Then he laughed. It wasn't his laugh, this was deeper, rougher, and wrong in every way.
"Oh, birdie, birdie," he said, his voice a low rasp. "You're the one who won't leave my fucking mind, huh?"
I stumbled back, panicking.
He moved closer, closing the distance between us in seconds. His hand shot out, taking my arm and pulling me against him.
He leaned in, his mask with antlers hovering inches from my face, and his tongue dragged across my cheek, leaving a trail that made me shudder.
My stomach flipped, and I tried to twist away, but his hands tightened around me.
He leaned into my ear, growling. "Run."
This wasn't Snowman. This wasn't Thor. Someone else was in his body, someone I didn't recognize.
My heart raced as I pushed him hard, watching him stumble backward onto the bed.
I didn't wait to see if he got up. I just ran. My feet slid on the hallway tiles as I scrambled toward the stairs.
I could barely breathe.
My whole body felt like it was moving through molasses, but I forced myself forward. The mirrored glass staircase caught the low light and, I knew, this was the beginning of a nightmare. I grabbed the railing, my sweaty palms slipping as I ran, stumbling down.
At the last second, I made the mistake of looking back.
He was there.
The deer skull mask covered his face, those hollow eye sockets boring into me. His bare chest shimmered, every muscle tensed and alive under his skin. He still had the black jeans on from earlier, but now his hand gripped an axe.
A scream tore out of me, and I sprinted down the last few steps, my legs wobbling. It was useless, I hit the bottom, and his hand was already in my hair, yanking me back so hard I thought my neck might snap.
"It's my fucking turn now," he growled, pulling me closer until I could feel his breath against my ear. "You have no idea how long I've been waiting."
Panic took over. I didn't think, I just reacted. My elbow drove into his stomach with everything I had. His grip loosened, and I broke free, running toward the front door.
It was locked.
"No, no, no!" I clawed at the lock, my fingers trembling. I spun around, desperate, and there he was, laughing, enjoying the whole fucking thing.
He raised the axe, and it came down, slamming into the door behind me. I screamed again, but it didn't stop him. He just kept laughing.
This thing , whatever it was, didn't have a shred of humanity left. It felt like I was looking at some kind of revenant, something that had crawled out of the woods to hunt me.
I ran, slipping past the door and into the living room. My foot caught on the carpet, and I went down, the air knocked out of me.
I tried so hard to get up, but his hand closed around my ankle. He didn't just grab me, he dragged me. The carpet burned against my skin as I clawed at it, trying to hold on to anything. He didn't stop until we were back at the staircase.
The mirrored steps caught everything. His mask, his body, and me reflected in broken pieces.
"Birdie," he said, tilting his head. "What a cute little name. But you're not just cute, are you?"
I didn't answer. I couldn't. My throat was too tight.
"You like this, don't you?" he taunted, his tone almost playful. "Being chased. Tsk, tsk, tsk."
He shoved me further up the stairs. My body collapsed onto the cold mirror, I felt the glass dig into my palms as I tried to push myself upright.
Before I could move, he was on me, his full weight pressing me down. I couldn't breathe, couldn't think.
His mask was just a breath away from my own, his fingers tracing a slow path beneath my sweater, across my chest. Yet, there was no discomfort, no fear. I knew it was Thor, even if he wasn't fully aware of it at that moment.
He lifted my sweater over my head and used it to bind my hands above me. His face moved down, traveling from the rise of my breasts to the flat of my stomach, the silhouette of deer antlers framing my face.
Every brush of his skin against mine sent shivers rippling through me, but I didn't pull away. I craved for him. With one knee he nudged apart my thighs and bent his head lower still. My trousers lay in tatters around us, I was naked from earlier.
"Hold still," he commanded.
As I nodded, he widened the distance between my legs further apart. Turning my gaze to the reflective mirror of the railing next to me, I saw him dropping slowly towards me.
As his masked face hovered over mine, he lowered the antlers of his mask and glided on my clit with their tips. A soft moan escaped from between my lips as I sank lower onto him; this time feeling part of one horn slide inside me, locking me onto him.
The bone structure of the horn was shaped as an 'L', with a shorter side at the base that now pierced me, and an extended higher half with three more protrusions on top.
As he moved between my thighs, the horns grazed against my butt hole, probing.
He removed his mask, drawing nearer, the horns persisting within me, securing the mask onto me as he drove the horns deeper within. I completely surrendered myself to him. Both horns were lodged inside me; he was thrusting them further in and I craved for more.
"You're soaked," he said, retracting one of the horns from within me.
He freed my hands from the sweater and commanded, "Turn around and kneel."
I turned around, my palms resting on the middle step, while my knees found comfort on the step beneath it. I could feel how wet I was, I could feel how the drops fell onto the mirrored floor, and my legs were wide open for him,spine curved into an arch and I begged for more.
He broke both horns off the mask and moved closer, his face hovering above, lips parted, saliva sliding down to my backside, and he poked it with his finger before sliding his thumb inside. I sobbed, my knees buckled. He pulled out his finger and slowly stuck the horn inside, inch by inch.
He placed the other end of the horn against my clit, rapidly shifting it from side to side. My eyelids fell shut, teeth gnawing at my lower lip.
"Snowman, I need Snowman," I whimpered but was met with nothing more than a raw chuckle from behind.
"Sorry, birdie , you're stuck with me," he said as he lifted the antler, hooking me onto it and spiraling within me. I could feel every single twist and turn inside me.
Then he moved closer; his trousers hit the glass floor with a soft thud and one antler clinked against it. He tormented me with the tip of his cock, easing into me slowly as he simultaneously tugged at my backside with the antler. He thrust inside me so hard that it brought me to my knees, but his arms were around me, keeping me upright.
He pulled the antler out of me and threw it onto the steps, and with his hands spread my ass cheeks and thrust himself deeper and deeper into me. Each thrust became more intense until I fell down. He picked me up gently, guiding me before him until I found myself kneeling again.
"Open your mouth," he said as his hands gripped my hair, and I knew what was coming.
I looked at him with a fire in my eyes, parting my lips and allowing my tongue to pop out.
He leaned in, placing his cock into my waiting mouth, pushing it further in. His hands found the back of my head, gripping firmly as he drove himself deeper within me. The air escaped from my lungs, a gasping struggle for breath that seemed futile against his relentless pace. I felt my eyes blur, and my breath was gone, but he just continued, his palm delivering sharp slaps across my face while shouting, "brEATHE."
He continued to thrust inside, my throat aching from the constant pressure. In a moment, the only sounds permeating the air were my choked sobs. Then he released me, placing me back on the staircase. The chill of the stone steps seeped through my torn clothes as I sat there, clothes ripped and scattered around us.
Parting my legs once more, settling himself between them. He drew me closer and continued his pace.
I screamed again, every fiber of my being protesting in pain yet craving for more.
I was addicted.
To pain.
To him.
To every single version of him.