The Art of Obsession (Savage Stalkers #1)

27. “I will not break your skin, but I need your pain. Give me your pain.”

27

“I will not break your skin, but I need your pain. Give me your pain.”

Chapter Playlist:

“The Becoming” – Nine Inch Nails

“In Two” – Nine Inch Nails

“Feed the Wolf” – Breaking Benjamin

“I hate u, I love u” –Gnash ft Olivia O’Brien

EVERLEIGH

He made it clear he was not seeking atonement or compassion. No commiserating over a tragic background. Don’t let it affect you, I scold myself. He’s made no excuses for who he is. And he gave me twenty questions. And twenty answers.

And I want to know this one the most.

“I never remembered my parents, so no mommy or daddy issues if that disappoints you,” he snickers, caressing my skin, spreading tingles everywhere. “My first foster parents were quick to adopt me. When I turned five, I knew why.”

Cal settles down next to me. Despite the blindfold, I can feel his body heat and know he’s lying on his side, elbow probably propping his head. Oddly enough, the silk ties and the butt plug seem to help me. They keep me in the moment.

“You’ve asked who I am,” he begins, his voice low and even. “But to understand me, you need to understand the world I came from. My community was off the grid in the mountains, farmhouses that dated back to the 1800s. Old blood. Very old…”

I nod, afraid to speak. When he trails his knuckles across my cheek, I shiver. He scoots closer, his naked flesh nudging mine, but his substantial length is calm.

“We lived like we were part of another time.” He sifts his fingers through my hair. “A world untouched by modernity. Old beliefs. Ancient practices. The kind of things most people read about in horror stories and think can’t possibly be real.”

“What kind of practices?” I ask softly, my voice barely audible over the pounding of my heart.

A pause. A deep inhale. And then… “Blood rituals. Bloodletting. They believed it purified the soul, gave power,” he sharpens his voice, his fingers digging into my scalp. I don’t protest. If touching me helps him get through this and give me the answers I want, I’ll take it.

“From the time I was a child, they taught me how to use a blade—how to cut myself, how to cut others.”

I wince, remembering the scars on his backside.

“There were ceremonies,” he continues, rubbing his lips along my brow. “Elaborate rituals where blood was spilled like water. The first time they handed me a knife, I was six. I didn’t understand. I thought it was a game.”

Any words get stuck in my throat. My heart burns for him. This isn’t supposed to happen.

“When I was older, they sent me into the forest alone for weeks at a time,” he says. “To hunt. To survive. To prove myself.” There’s something like a smile in his voice, an amusement. I feel it in his fingertips as they shift the strands off my cheek, baring my face. “But I didn’t just hunt. I created . Mud, twigs, berry juice—whatever I could find, I used it to make art. It was the only thing that made me feel… human.”

His voice softens, and I can picture the boy he must have been, alone in the woods, finding solace in creation. A born prodigy.

“Sometimes,” he continues, “I’d come across hikers, backpackers, or homeless people who’d wandered onto our land. They didn’t know the rules. They didn’t know the danger.” His voice pitches to a low tone. “The clan always found them. And they always died.”

I’m almost afraid to speak, but he said he always wants my authenticity, my voice. “They… killed them?” I rasp.

“They called it justice,” he says bitterly. “Night rituals. Roaring fires. And bloodletting to cleanse the trespassers’ souls. And then they drank their blood before burning them alive.”

My stomach churns, but I feel his gaze on me. When he lights a palm on my right ass cheek, I whimper at the increase in pressure.

Roaming his mouth along the side of my head, Cal goes on, his tone shifting, “But even in that hell, there was light. Her name was Naomi.”

His whole body seems to soften at her name. His breath curls warm and even across my face. “She was my foster sister. Orphaned, like me. Golden curls, green eyes. She idolized me, followed me everywhere.”

I hear the affection in his voice, feel it in the way he lightly touches my skin.

“When I went on my hunting trips, I’d carve little animals and flowers for her. She loved them. Played with them like they were treasures. And when I came back, she’d run to me like I was some hero. She was the only good thing in that place. The only thing that made me believe there was something worth saving.”

Cal grips the back of my neck like a vice. I gasp but remain as still as possible. His fury seems to penetrate me, resonating down my spine. Desperate to convey the truth. Like he’s speaking it for the first time.

“She got sick when she was eight. Fever, weakness… I knew she needed real help, but the clan had their own ideas.”

“What did they do?” I whisper.

With his chin draping my cheek, I feel his jaw tighten, and the hand on my neck squeezes, gutting my breath. “They said she needed more bloodletting. That she was impure. I argued, but our foster father wouldn’t listen. He handed me the blade and told me to do it.”

“Did you?”

“I refused.” His voice is like steel. Cal fists my hair, twisting, coiling it around his hold. “For the first time in my life, I said no. So he fucking did it himself. The same monster who carved up my back and taught me what it means to be a real man…in the most personal of ways.”

When he pauses, the silence is suffocating, the horror crippling as his pain seeps into my pores, seeking my heart.

When he shifts, releasing my hair, I’m confused. He was on the verge of telling me something deep, something even more horrific. What is he?—

—strike! The burn hits me like a bite of hot iron. I hiss, tipping my head back just as Cal brushes multiple thick ribbons of something, soft and warm but…

“Leather cat o’ nine tails,” he purrs darkly, tracing the strips along my back and tickling my buttocks. “If I don’t keep my focus on you, Everleigh, every part of you, I will get lost in the memories. I will not break your skin, but I need your pain. Give me your pain.”

I hear the low whistle. The flail cracks against my back. Once. Twice. Three times. I bite the pillow below my head to muffle my moans. I excuse it as Stockholm Syndrome again, but I trust him. Trust him not to hurt me beyond repair. With every burning strike, my legs shudder.

“Fuck,” he growls. “Your skin is like a scarlet rose beneath my scourge. Christ, yes, I need this. Fucking need you, Everleigh,” he finishes, bringing the flail down again and again, finding new skin to burn. He works his way down from my back, attacks the back of my legs, and finally…my ass.

By now, I’ve broken out into whole-body tremors. All my flesh is inflamed, but the warm wetness in my pussy is undeniable. I’m clenching more. But every time I do, the pressure from the plug mounts, threatening to carry me away.

He lashes my ass again and again, painting the skin red, pausing between every few strokes to palm my cheeks. I shiver each time from the contrast of his cool hand.

Rational Everleigh fades beneath the dark, erotic pleasure consuming me. I’m squirming, writhing, and trying to grind my clit against the bed.

Oh, Everleigh, you’re going to look like a sinful, little work of art when he’s done with you, Cherry gushes, twirling in my mind. Such a devil. Maybe Lucifer himself commissioned him to brand you until you burn bright enough to light up all of hell!

“I killed him!” Cal finally snarls, slapping the flail down before he mounts me. His dick bulges against my ass, and I moan from the pressure as he thrusts softly against me. “I stabbed him, tore out his heart. It was still beating in my hands.”

My heart races, but it’s not horror that rushes through me. My veins should be icy. Instead, they burn with him. And I’m latching onto his hunger, feeding on it and…his violence. His vengeance.

You’re burning brighter than hellfire now, my dear—no wonder he can’t resist mounting his throne.

Cherry’s hums fill my mind. For the first time, it feels like we’re fusing ever so slightly. Like I’m receiving pieces of her, of my inner psycho until I’d crush the same heart between my fingers—feel the warm blood trickle down my arm.

Yes, his throne. Because I’m the only one strong enough, real enough to hold him through this.

“But it didn’t matter,” he says, his voice breaking as he grips my hips, knotches his crown to my pussy, and drives home. I choke on a scream. “She was already gone.”

With him bearing down on my ass and his thick cock throbbing against the plug, the pressure is unbelievable. He holds my hips, leaving soft bruises on my skin as he thrusts once, then pauses. I moan into the pillow, aching, dying for him to move. It should be impossible. He pummeled my cunt just a short time ago, pounded me raw.

The carved heart rasps the bedsheets, stinging from the motions.

But I want this. He wants my pain. I want his. His torture. His past. Everything.

Instead, he lowers his head to my ear, increasing the pressure. “I held her. I painted her skin with her own blood, made her beautiful one last time. And then…I buried her.”

He pulls out to the tip, then spears me hard and deep, filling all of me. I cry out with each thrust.

Seizing my hair again, Cal yanks it back, twists my head to one side, and covers my mouth with his. Demanding, needing, taking. My back arches so much, the upper half of my body is off the bed, my breasts bouncing with each slam of his hips. I’m squeezing harder than ever, hearing the wet sound of my pussy squelching as he fucks me.

Sweat sheens my body, and my welted skin chafes beneath him as he rocks against me. Hard, slow, strong, deep.

Cal isn’t looking for pity, but I can’t help it.

“Fuuuck, you’re soaked. My good girl gushing onto her master’s cock.”

“Don’t stop, Cal!” I gasp, my double meaning clear.

“I ran that night.” He hovers above my lips, driving into me, fucking me harder. “Lived on the streets, in abandoned train cars. Graffiti became my salvation, my first real art.”

Labored breaths thicken between us. Both of ours.

Do you feel it, Everleigh? The way his violence claims you? It’s like poetry written in blood and desire.

“Would you believe I joined the circus for a time?” he chuckles, slapping the seared flesh of my ass.

Joined the circus? Darling, I bet he was the main attraction. The Devil’s Acrobat, bending bodies and breaking hearts.

A crazed giggle leaves my throat. “Cherry says you were probably the main attraction.”

His hot tongue sweeps along my cheek, tingling the skin. “Thank you for the compliment. No, I was not. But I was the main blade thrower for a time. And I spent a full year training as an acrobat. Knives, ropes, guns…I mastered everything .”

He throbs inside me, pulls out, and stabs back in. I convulse, clamping down. Anchored to his cock, I cry out as wave after wave of pleasure raids my system until my eyes roll back in my head with light and color flashing to blind my vision.

Not the only things he mastered, Evie. That man is a ringleader in bed, too. Straight up god of sex status.

“Christ, you’re a vision when you come like this with your swollen flesh on display. My own little exhibit.” He traces the reddened marks, electrifying my skin with little currents, raising the hairs.

“By then, I’d experimented with different forms of art,” he goes on, thrusting again. “Perfecting every technique. But I loved paint the most. Loved the feel of it juicing my hands and dripping down my skin. I spent years with my hands color-stained.”

Maybe that’s why he wears gloves so often.

“One time, I was practicing my acrobatics but with a large brush. I splattered and smeared paint on the walls in my own chaotic beauty.” He rubs his lips along my shoulders and breathes in the scent of my hair. “I even dipped my feet in it and swung upon those ropes, leaving red footprints like I’d danced barefooted in blood.”

I’d give my ovaries to have seen that! squeals Cherry, flapping her wings.

“It was the first time my art was captured. The second time, I wore a mask. And it was the first night I went viral. And I monetized that shit like mother-fucking manna from heaven,” he laughs, grinding against me, turning the plug until I orgasm again, my whole body narrowing to the molten heat surging through me like rivers of stars.

“Cal!” I beg him, needing him to come.

With a deep growl, he tugs me hard, snapping the ribbons and hauling me into his arms. Facing away from him. Still blindfolded. The ribbons slip. And Cal lifts me and slams me down on his cock. I scream as he bounces me on his dick like a maniac, my tits shaking and swinging. He bites down on my shoulder, wraps his arms around me, and fondles my breasts.

“Christ, I love your tits,” he murmurs in my ear before kissing my neck and kneading the mounds. “Perfect fit for my hands.” He captures my nipples, twisting and turning, erupting more pleasure inside me. Can one die from too many orgasms?

Cherry giggles. They don’t call them “little deaths” for no reason.

“Cal, finish it, fucking finish it!” I shriek.

Still holding my breasts, Cal drives his hardness up, fucking me, pounding me up and down.

“Years later, after I’d hit six figures following my first global tour, I went back. I had the goddamn clan raided. But I didn’t stop there. I put on the mask and killed every man who’d ever spilled innocent blood in the name of their sick beliefs. The children… I made sure they went to good homes.”

“Oh, god, please, fuck ,” I gasp and clench all around him, my inner flesh set aflame.

Finally, Cal snaps, jerking in rapid-fire bursts until his cock slams to the hilt. I come with him, exploding all around him, feeling it all. His past, his present, his darkness.

I feel everything.

We collapse onto the bed in a whirlwind of ragged breaths. Cal removes the blindfold, and I blink, my eyes adjusting and meeting the sight of his wickedly beautiful face.

His piercing gaze locks onto mine and he cups my sweaty cheek. I close my eyes. “Now you know the man behind the mask. So, tell me, Little Quill, for research purposes… what do you think?”

“I’m…undone,” I gasp out.

He cups my mound, and I wince but then realize he’s withdrawing the butt plug. As soon as it’s out, I fall against him, unable to do anything but curl into a little ball in his arms, feeling smaller than ever beneath the gravity of his history. I’m exhausted—physically, emotionally—and I know why. He’s become the weight I carry, the shadow I can’t shake. Heavy is the head that holds the crown, but heavier is the throne that holds the king.

And Raidyn Callum, Acheron, the God of Art, is every inch a king.