15. Ivy
FIFTEEN
IVY
You.
I wanted to wipe that smug smile off his face. Wanted him to know just how much he’d affected me in our short acquaintance. Not that he remembered me. Even if he had seen me that night, I’d changed a lot since then. I went from an innocent, bare-faced girl with strawberry blonde hair to a fiery-red inferno with shadowy makeup to compliment the darkness inside. I carried myself differently, looked at the world in a completely new light. People who knew me then wouldn’t recognize me now.
But I didn’t mourn the loss of my old self. No, I embraced it instead, relishing how I felt knowing I’d overcome what might’ve broken a lesser person. Not only that, but I excelled as my new self. Embracing a whole new lifestyle, I learned so much, developed so many skills I’d likely never have even considered useful in my old life. Hell, the old me would have pissed herself if someone had told her what she’d one day become.
Look at me now.
I had the men who killed my father strung up in a warehouse, here to torture as I saw fit, do whatever I wanted to do to them, and then?—
And then I’d kill them. And they’d be gone, and I . . .
. . . would have to live with the monster they’d turned me into.
How was that fair?
As I pondered my plans, the fucker in front of me started to wriggle again, his chains rattling as a low, mechanical whine sounded from the pulley above him.
It’s a warehouse pulley. It’s designed to move heavier things than him. I’m sure it’ll be fine.
“Why should I give you what you want, Jackal?” I whispered, more to myself than to him. “Why should the man who killed my father get any sort of sympathy from me?”
His eyes widened, and it was like understanding finally dawned on him at the slip of my tongue. “So that’s it. We offed your daddy, huh?” The shift in her posture told me I’d hit the nail on the head. “You know we only kill people who deserve it, kitten.”
“He was innocent!” I shouted, standing up so fast it toppled the damn chair I’d been sitting in. “You killed him based on someone else’s word, and he died for sins he never committed.”
Enraged and out of control now, spiraling like I’d not done in years, I flipped the table with all my tools on it, sending them sprawling all over the floor in a scattered mess. I was not going to believe the word of a killer over what I knew to be true. If my father had been involved in something that bad, I’m sure there would have been signs.
And there weren’t.
Jackal was a liar.
“Go to hell, you asshole,” I muttered under my breath, picking up the knife I’d abandoned earlier. The blade still bore a trace of his buddy’s blood on it, and I smiled to myself as I contemplated making them blood brothers now. “You’ll pay. You’ll all pay for what you did.”
Dingo groaned from his place on the table. “We don’t kill people who don’t deserve it, girl. I promise you, your daddy wasn’t what you thought he was.”
I slammed my hands over my ears, blocking out their lies. “Stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it!”
I didn’t register the action as my body jolted forward and tipped the table with Dingo attached, watching it roll onto its top, effectively crushing him under it. I whirled on Jackal next, the blade in my hand making twenty or so tiny little cuts in his skin, the blood leeching out of his traitorous body, staining his skin and the tattered remains of his shirt. When I spun on Coyote next, Jackal spoke up, obviously to deflect attention back to himself.
“Which one of them was your piece of shit daddy?”
He cocked his head to the side, contemplating something as his grin spread across that too-pretty face of his. Those dangerous, sharpened teeth made me wet, and I didn’t even bother denying it to myself this time.
“He wasn’t a piece of shit,” I whispered, hating how turned on I was by this whole thing. What did it say about me that I’d become a sadist, enjoying this to the point of sexual gratification? Was this what my future was to be? Would this be the only thing that stirred emotions, feelings, arousal in me?
Would I become one of them?
Fate chose that moment to let Jackal’s chain snap in half, the pulley above us giving way under his heavy load, and I rushed forward to keep him from breaking his neck, my body somewhat cushioning his fall.
Groaning at the impact, I leaned up on my elbows to find the fucker’s face in my lap, his nose buried against my crotch as that wince of pain turned into a knowing smile. He inhaled deeply, closing his eyes as if to relish the scent, and nuzzled my pussy. Heat drenched my face and my cunt in equal measure, and I couldn’t scramble away from him fast enough to hide my body’s betrayal.
He looked up at me from the floor as I stood, not even caring that he could see up my skirt from his vantage point on the floor now. “You’re disgusting.”
“And you’re horny,” he retorted, his teeth shining as he dragged that tongue across the top row. “For your father’s killers. How about that for irony?”
“I-I’m not,” I insisted, trying desperately to deny what I knew deep inside was true. I couldn’t deny they were attractive. Couldn’t deny that this arousal was from hurting them—hurting him.
But I couldn’t do anything about it now. My secret was out.
I wanted to wound him like he’d just wounded my pride. I wanted him to regret his decision to take liberties he wasn’t owed .
So I turned my attention to Coyote as I stood, straightening my skirt like the boss bitch I pretended to be.
“Maybe I’ll make your buddy here take care of that little hiccup for me. What do you think, Coyote? Would you like to be my bitch? One last pussy to lick before you die?”
His eyes refused to meet mine, but I saw the way the tops of his ears turned a vibrant red at my question. Almost like he was a virgin or something. That’d be impossible, though. As much as I hated them, I wasn’t blind. These men probably had women falling all over themselves to get in their beds.
Jackal snarled behind me as my hands ran across Coyote’s shoulders from behind him, teasing the edges of his jacket open, baring his naked chest beneath to the cool night air. Emboldened, I raked my nails over his unblemished skin, flicking a nipple on the way down.
The shudder that ran through his body and the broken, feral groan that slipped from his lips had me practically panting with need.
“Leave him alone!” Jackal practically screamed from the floor, twisting and turning, writhing around on the ground in an attempt to reach us. “It’s me you want, isn’t it?”
His eyes were blown wide, but he wasn’t afraid. He seemed almost resigned to the idea that he was the primary target. But I hadn’t told him that. Had he guessed? Or was he just aware that he was the most loathsome of his bunch?
“And what makes you think it’s you I really wanted? After all, you’re all three tied up here, and I’ve made it perfectly clear I plan to torture you all.”
“I’m not stupid,” he snapped back, his teeth clicking together like a dog who’s ready to lash out. “You’re only hurting them to get under my skin. Otherwise, you wouldn’t look at me for a reaction every time you hurt one of them.”
He had me there. Clearly, I’d slipped up a little bit and showed my hand. “Fair enough points,” I conceded, hating that he could read me so easily. “What do you propose?”
“Let them live, and you can do whatever you want with me.”
At first, I was speechless, staring at him like horns had miraculously started growing from his face.
And then, I tipped my head back and roared with laughter.
The sound echoed off the empty warehouse walls, distorting and twisting it into a mockery of my voice, making me sound foreign to my own ears. Still, I wiped a tear from the corner of my eye when I got myself under control and smiled at him, much like one would a stray dog who still retained a bit of his youthful appearance.
“Oh, that’s rich. A man that’s tied up in chains, demanding I spare his friends, who are also restrained, all because he thinks he’s somehow going to escape still.”
His eyes hardened. “Better than watching you force yourself on my men.”
Force? Did he not understand what it really meant to be unwilling?
Perhaps I should teach him.
“Oh, please. You can’t rape the willing.” As if to punctuate my point, I reached down, running my hand down one of Coyote’s muscled thighs. “Your mouths may say you’re unwilling, but your bodies tell another story.”
“You’re fucked in the head,” Jackal replied, incredulity tainting his words, even as Coyote’s head fell back and he bared his throat to me. “Coyote, don’t?—”
Coyote’s mouth didn’t utter a single word, but he emitted a growl so ferocious it had even me recoiling in fear. His eyes landed on Jackal, and they seemed to share an unspoken conversation that the rest of the room wasn’t privy to.
Jackal, surprisingly, shut up.
That was an interesting development.
I ran my nose along the taut column of Coyote’s neck, relishing the power I held between the two of us. “You like this, don’t you?” I talked to him like I would a stray, my lips drawn back in a mocking sneer even as I drowned in the scent of his sweat, memories of his voice playing in my head on repeat. “You’re such a good dog. Not like your buddy over there.”
“Get your hands off him,” Dingo shouted, the sound muffled, considering his face was smashed against the concrete floor. “He’s not your toy.”
“Oh? And what about you, Dingo?” I pulled away from Coyote, watching with a sort of forlorn disappointment as his whole body relaxed. “Do you want in on the action? Do you yearn for someone to use you and abuse you, only to throw you away when they’re done?”
“Not as much as you yearn for a man to tell you he’s proud of you.”
Jackal had a mouth on him, and he was smart, but Dingo . . . Dingo knew how to cut deep.
“Get fucked.”
His grin widened. “You first.”
A crash behind me drew my attention, and what did I find but Coyote, now lying on his back, the chair smashed to bits beneath him. Thinking fast, I grabbed the knife again, straddling Jackal’s prone form as I put the sharp edge of the blade to his throat, keeping an eye on the now-loose beast I’d just been taunting.
“Let him go,” Coyote said, his voice like a quiet whisper on the wind.
“You try anything funny, and I’ll make sure to slit his throat before I go for yours.” As if to emphasize my point, I dug the blade into Jackal’s skin, drawing blood. “You know I will.”
Coyote growled, but he didn’t move a step further. Beneath me, Jackal groaned.
“Fuck’s sake, she’s heavy, man. What are you waiting for?” He stared daggers into me, baring his teeth again. “Get this bitch off me.”
“What Coyote is going to do is set Dingo’s table back up for me. And then he’s gonna wrap his hands around the legs of that table and wait for my next command.” I let my eyes fall to Jackal’s, and we both stared at each other for what felt like an eternity. “What he’s not going to do is put you in danger to save his own skin.”
I knew the moment he realized I was right. It was like the fight just drained out of him. He sealed his lips and said nothing, but the one thing he couldn’t fight was the way his cock had twitched in his pants when I sat on him and put that blade to his throat.
That was one secret I’d hold onto for now.
Coyote lurched forward and made for Dingo’s table, and I prepared to follow through should I need to—if any of these dogs got it in their head to send me to hell, I’d drag as many of them with me as humanly possible, starting with Jackal.
He’d never escape me. Not even in death would I forgive his transgressions.
It appeared at least one of the dogs was capable of following orders. In a matter of seconds, Coyote had Dingo upright, his table back on all four legs, and was kneeling at Dingo’s feet, his hands gripping the table legs so tightly his knuckles were growing pale.
“Good boy,” I muttered, quirking a brow at how quickly he’d listened to my commands. Now, I had to decide how to proceed.
About a foot from Coyote’s position were a couple pairs of handcuffs, with no key in sight. I pointed the knife at him, then at the cuffs, and smiled.
“Cuff yourself to the table legs.”
Interestingly enough, he chose to restrain himself facing the table instead of outward, with his back to it. It left him exposed, and it was definitely a move of submission .
Interesting.
Coyote didn’t strike me as a submissive man. Either he valued Jackal as more than a partner, or he believed himself beaten. And I doubted it was the latter. He might lose Jackal in the process, but overpowering me would be child’s play for a man his size.
He might be lean, but there was muscle abound beneath that tanned skin, and it was well-used and finely tuned.
I dragged my eyes away from Coyote Appreciation Hour and grabbed the end of Jackal’s chains, deciding it might be a good idea to chain him to something to prevent him from wriggling his way into inconveniencing me again.
There.
A lone pole holding up a second-floor walkway stood not far from where the pulley broke, so I looped the chain around it a few times and tucked it in, pulling on it for good measure. When I was convinced it wouldn’t move, I turned my attention back to Dingo, whose insult, or challenge, or taunt, whatever you wanted to call it, had stuck with me.
Get fucked.
You first.
“Time to pay up, Dingo,” I mused, slipping the knife back into my hoodie sleeve. “Care to put your mouth in play and wag that tongue again?”
All three men in the room registered confusion in their expressions, but it appeared to dawn on Coyote before it made sense to the other two. He hung his head and a small smile broke across his lips, just the barest hint of one that had me questioning if I’d imagined it before it disappeared once more.
“The fuck are you talking about, girl?” Dingo’s eyes narrowed in frustration as he likely played back the whole scene in his head, trying to figure out what I was talking about. He remained in the dark until I moved to the head of the table, my fingers moving down his torso to count the buttons on his shirt from top to bottom–or as far as I could reach from here.
Suddenly, it became very, very clear to him what I’d meant.
If they wanted to play a game with me, I’d make it worth my own while. After all, what was the harm in taking pleasure from them as I killed them? If they were dead, there wouldn’t be any witnesses to me letting my more animalistic urges take over. And it would take something from them that they took away from me and mine a long time ago.
A choice.
They took away a whole lifetime of choices when they forced my life to veer wildly off-course. They changed my whole makeup, my whole personality, when they decided to kill my father. It was all their choice, not mine.
And now, the tables were turned, and I’d take what I wanted.
Or, rather, what my body wanted. I wanted nothing from these men but release, and their utter torment. And then, their deaths.
Not a lot to ask, right?
“What the fuck are you doing to him?”
Jackal was the only one brave enough to open his mouth, and fuck all if it didn’t make me wish I’d thought to gag his dumb ass. Later, I told myself, settling in to do what I’d climbed up here to do.
If Dingo wanted me to get fucked, then I would.
And I’d use his body to do it.
Consent was a choice, and turnabout was fair play.
“Can’t you tell?” I taunted, licking my lips as I stared down at the body before me, mapping out each divot and curve with my eyes. “I’m going to take what I want.”
Jackal was conveniently unable to add two and two together, so I made it a little simpler for him. Still smiling like the cat who’d caught the canary, I bent over at the waist, slipped a hand beneath my skirt on one side, and tugged my panties down my thighs until they slid the rest of the way to the floor on their own.
Jackal and Coyote’s eyes followed their progression with a single-minded concentration. Hell, if they were actual dogs, their tongues would have been hanging out of the sides of their mouths, salivating.
I knelt and picked those panties up, twirling them around my finger for good measure, watching them watch me. “I’m going to make him serve me.” I strode over to Jackal, who lay upside down on the floor, and stood over him, letting him peek up my skirt into the darkness that hid my cunt from his view. “And after I’ve taken what I want, taken away your choices, I’m going to kill you.”
I didn’t give him a chance to argue. The panties I’d just peeled off my body went right into his open mouth, gagging him quite effectively. Dingo didn’t speak either as I returned to him, crawled up onto the table, and traced my fingers down his torso again as I straddled him and smiled.
“I hope you’re good with your tongue, Dingo.”
I reversed my position and lowered myself onto his face, letting my skirt drop down and cover his head as I hovered an inch above him, waiting for him to feel like he had a choice. Just when I felt his hot breath fan over my sensitive skin, I lowered myself that last inch, putting myself right on his lips, hands splayed out over his abs, eyes on Coyote, who still hadn’t looked up from the floor.
And then, that tongue that’d been so eager to wag earlier darted out and tasted me, and fuck all if I didn’t nearly come apart right then and there.
It had been so long since I’d let a man please me.
He was clearly skilled, and I let my eyes drift closed as that tongue slid up inside me, testing the edges of my sanity, dragging my pleasure to the forefront of my mind as all else raced from it. He angled his chin, and suddenly I found myself rocking my clit against it, chasing the friction of his stubble with a neediness I didn’t know I possessed.
Who was this sexual deviant, tying up men and taking her pleasure before she killed them?
Was this the new me? Was this what they turned me into?
Or had I been this girl all along, just buried beneath layers of what I’d been taught to believe, to think, to do?
“Fuck,” I whispered, hating how much I liked the way Jackal watched, his eyes like saucers on that face, jealousy and eagerness dancing in their depths. “Fuck, yeah, just like that.” A slight moan slipped from my parted lips, and I leaned back, putting more weight on his face as his tongue traveled to my clit, swirling around the sensitive bud with alarming accuracy and skill. I could only imagine what kind of danger he’d be if he had his hands, too, and was almost tempted to find out.
“What a whore,” Jackal mocked, his eyes on my tits, which bounced as I leaned forward again, my nails raking up over Dingo’s abs. “Can’t get a man to fuck you willingly, so you have to make them fuck you.” He shook his head, which was hilarious, considering his position. “How pathetic.”
“Better a whore than a—than a dog.”
I almost said better a whore than a killer, but I couldn’t. In fact, I was no better than them now. I’d killed, many times for convenience, and done so indiscriminately to get what I wanted—closer to the Neon Dogs.
So I opted to redirect for the only thing I could claim I wasn’t.
A dog.
Specifically, a Neon Dog.
No matter what I did, I’d never be one of them.
Yet with all that denial running through me, I still panted like one as I raised up off Dingo’s face, giving him a moment to breathe as I caught my own breath, heart racing, spine fucking tingling.
“You’re better at this than I thought you’d be,” I tossed over my shoulder, resting my bare pussy on his chest as I leaned back and rested my weight on my arms, palms on either side of his shoulders.
“I’m out of practice,” Dingo growled, fighting his restraints just slightly.
Off to the side, Jackal rolled his eyes and snorted. He muttered something around his impromptu gag, but I couldn’t make it out, nor was I interested in what he had to say.
I sat back down on Dingo’s face and leaned forward, resting on my elbows as I watched Coyote. His eyes were still on the floor, but if I just reached out and ruffled his hair, then maybe?—
As if summoned by my thoughts, his eyes rose and followed the line of my body, stopping only when they locked on to my own. In that second, I felt so seen and vulnerable that it took everything in me not to fall apart from a mere look.
A look.
No words, no touch, just a look.
Fuck me, what was this man?
His lips parted, eyes hooded like he was half asleep, that sharp jaw ticking as he watched me get eaten out by his partner.
And then he stood up, still chained to the edge of the table, and leaned forward like he wanted to taste me, too.
“You,” he whispered, his voice hoarse, strained, unlike the times I’d heard it in my room, through the speaker or my headphones. Like he’d swallowed a pound of sand and needed his deadly thirst quenched.
“Me,” I whispered back, my eyes rolling into the back of my head as Dingo’s tongue slipped and curled around my clit again, then dove back in for seconds inside my pussy. I leaned forward just a bit, and he lifted his head and followed my movements, straining to stay attached to me like he wanted this.
I reached forward, fisted my fingers in Coyote’s hair, and dragged him to me so I could put my mouth on something and avoid the embarrassment of moaning through the orgasm that claimed me.
They didn’t deserve to hear me fall apart.
With Dingo’s tongue in my cunt and Coyote’s in my mouth, my whole body shuddered. I fought to avoid swallowing my own tongue as I attacked the man before me with an intensity matching the waves of pleasure rocking me from below. Dingo didn’t let up as I came, his tongue lapping up my arousal, licking me clean as I moaned into Coyote’s mouth, my whole body dripping in sweat. It felt like I was being devoured, consumed from the inside out by a fire that burned hotter than the sun.
It was a heady, almost euphoric feeling. I’d never had my world rocked so wildly.
It was a damn shame I had to fucking kill them.