Chapter 19 #2
Yorick gasps, jerking back. “Don’t spoon Johnny. We don’t know what he is! He might be a cannibal for all we know. I’ve seen the way he looks at my face. He wants to consume my beautiful looks in the hope it would make him prettier.”
“I think the last thing Johnny would want is to look prettier,” I say as I grab his arm. I pull it under me when I roll so he ends up underneath me while I’m leaning over him. His legs are spread around me as I lean in, and I can damn near see a twinkle in his eyes.
“You want me to touch you?” I ask, pushing forward until my cock is pressed against him. My eyes fixate on his expression when I do so.
He beams at me, pleased with his seduction skills.
“You want my face too, don’t you?” he whispers as he lifts up until my lips are inches from his.
“It’s not your face I want,” I murmur in his ear, noticing the shiver that goes through him.
“Oh? What else could you want?”
I nip his neck and he’s so happy, he practically purrs. “I want…” I grab his arm and roll him right off the bed and onto the floor. “To see your face when I drop you on the ground.”
The way he lies on the floor, unmoving, face showing obvious shock, almost makes me laugh. Harassing him gives me so much pleasure that I feel confident I’ll have sweet dreams now.
“You… heathen. I hate how sexy that was,” Yorick cries as he grabs my blanket and winds his whole body up in it before he gets up and flops down on his side of the bed. “This is my protective barrier to keep your lusting ass away from me.”
He ought to know better than to think I could cave… that I would cave.
“Yeah? It might help if you pull it up a little higher,” I say, my eyes locked on his.
Yorick gasps once it sinks in that I’m suggesting covering his face. “I will seduce you, and the day I finally do, you will lean in for a kiss, and I’ll be all ‘ew’ and kiss someone else. Maybe puppers… if Casimir is looking the other way.”
“You have fun with that,” I say as I lie on my blanketless side of the bed while he glowers at me from his cocoon.
The joy I feel must show on my face since his eyes narrow, but all too soon he’s asleep. Eventually, I realize that I have no reason to keep staring at him and force myself to turn away. At least when he’s awake and loud, he drowns out the dark thoughts in my mind. He’s sleeping so soundly.
I’m unable to sleep, lying awake even while dawn stretches into the brightest part of the day.
Every time I close my eyes, I see that monster there, his hand on my back like he’s consuming me.
“You do as you’re told, Atticus. You do or you die; which would you prefer?”
“As if you’d kill me.”
“Ha… I would just make you wish you were dead.”
“You already do.”
“The pain you feel? The stakes driven into your limbs… the blood that drips from your body… just know that I could make this worse. So much worse. If you want me to remove them, then simply kill who I tell you to. Look, I even left the child alive so you can prove to me how loyal you truly are. Are you ready to do it now? You don’t even know her.
She’s an insignificant human. Now, if you don’t kill her when I remove the stakes, I will stake you here for a week and you can watch while she dies of dehydration. ”
“You might as well leave me here for a week, then, because I’m not doing it.”
“Oh, you will know true pain. You will—”
“Atticus!”
I jerk awake, not having realized I’d fallen asleep.
Hastily, I close my hands, still remembering the pain from where he’d staked my hands, arms, and legs down so I couldn’t heal. So I could hurt. So I would listen.
The blanket is thrown over my shoulders, and I look over at Yorick, confused.
“You were upset about something,” he says.
“I wasn’t.”
“Don’t be stubborn,” he says as he wraps me up and then wraps his arms around me while petting my hair. It’s all very strange and not sexy in the slightest.
“I’m right here. After my parents were killed… I saw their bodies, and for a long time… I saw them in my sleep. So whenever that happened, I liked to wrap myself tightly in a blanket and do my best to think about something else.”
“Did you have someone to hold you?” I ask for some foolish reason. The instant the words are out of my mouth, I regret them.
“No. You were the only recurring person in my life. Maybe I just didn’t know how to open myself to others because every time I tried, I couldn’t stop seeing them ripped apart like my parents and everyone I knew.
And every time I did manage to open myself up, I would find out that they only did it to use me or wanted something from me. ”
I open my mouth to tell Yorick that I’m fine alone but notice that he’s fallen silent, his hand buried in my hair. Instead of being comforted, I very much feel like I’m now merely a pillow for him to cling to while he drifts off to sleep.
I really intend to push him away, but as I lie there, I decide there’s no reason to when he’s already asleep.
Morpheus has killed every person I’ve formed an attachment to.
How long before he’ll kill this one?
I reach out and push a lock of hair off his cheek.
It does become rather difficult to feel nothing for everyone in my life. Especially when this one keeps barging back into it.