Chapter 16 Caleb
Caleb
The shotgun kicks against Scarletta's stomach.
Ryan's chest opens like a flower blooming in reverse—red petals spraying outward, wet and immediate. The force throws him backward, and what hits the concrete floor isn't a person anymore. Just meat and bone and the copper-bright smell of fresh death.
I watch Scarletta.
Not the body. Not the spreading pool beneath what used to be Ryan Adamson.
Her.
Blood mists her face in a fine spray. Droplets cling to her platinum hair like scattered rubies, catching the barn's dim light. Across her forearms, streaks of crimson where the blowback painted her skin. Her chest heaves, breath coming in sharp, ragged gasps that make her whole body shudder.
There's blood on her lip.
A single dark smear, almost black against the pink.
She's hyperventilating now, hands shaking so violently the shotgun rattles.
She drops it—the clatter against concrete sounds distant, irrelevant.
Her fingers come up to her face, swiping at the blood, but she's only smearing it.
Spreading Ryan across her cheeks, her chin, her forehead.
She spits, tries to clear her mouth, and the motion just transfers more of him onto her tongue.
She's panicking.
And I'm hard.
Fully, achingly erect. The kind that strains against fabric and demands attention.
I should be concerned about the body. The cleanup. The evidence. The fact that she just committed murder in my barn, and her fingerprints are all over the weapon, and this will require significant resources to make disappear.
Instead, I'm watching blood drip from her jawline onto her collarbone, and my cock throbs like it has its own heartbeat.
She's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
I take a step toward her, and my hand moves without conscious decision—sliding down, between my waistband and my skin, wrapping around my cock.
Her gaze drops to my hand. To what I'm doing.
The horror in her expression should stop me.
It doesn't.
This is wrong. I understand that intellectually. A man lies dead three feet away, and I'm stroking myself while his blood dries on the face of the woman I love.
Gross. The word floats through my consciousness like a passing cloud. Acknowledged. Dismissed.
Every body that falls at my feet or by my hand triggers this same response. A surge of power over the absolute finality of things. Proof that I can end existence itself. It's not something I chose. Not something I can control.
Derek. Volkov. The tech billionaire. The boarding school headmistress. The missionary.
I came after every single one.
And I'm not going to stop.
Not for morality. Not for appearances. Not even for her, my perfect, filthy, dark, depraved Scarletta.
Because this is who I am. What I am. The monster she wrote forty-seven stories about without knowing she was describing someone real.
I pull my hand out of my pants, pop the button on my jeans, drag the zipper down, and release myself so she can watch properly.
"This is what it does to me," I say. My voice soft. Soothing. "Killing. It makes me hard. And looking at you right now… all I'm thinking about is… fucking you."
She looks down at herself. Really seeing it for the first time—the spray of blood across her body, the heavier splatter across her chest, the way it's soaked into the fabric of her shirt.
Her hands tremble as they reach for the hem, and then she's ripping the shirt over her head in one jerky motion.
Underneath, she's wearing a coral-colored sports bra, bright and incongruous against the carnage. Clean.
Then she's bending forward, hooking her thumbs into the waistband of her workout leggings, peeling them down her thighs.
The fabric clings to her legs as she works it lower, revealing pale flesh beneath.
Unmarked. Untouched by Ryan's blood. She kicks the leggings away, and they land in a crumpled heap next to her discarded shirt.
She straightens, and immediately her arms come up to cross over her chest. Like she's trying to cover herself. To hide. Her shoulders curl inward, making herself smaller, and she stands there in just her bra and panties—looking at me with eyes that are too wide, too bright.
She looks terrified.
I nearly come just thinking that word.
Terrified.
Not of me, though. That's the beautiful part. Not of the man standing three feet away with his cock in his hand, hard from watching her kill. Not of what I might do to her, or what I've already done.
She's terrified of the consequences for what she just did.
The balancing of her scales. The reckoning she thinks is coming.
I walk over to her slowly, deliberately, my hand still wrapped around my cock because I'm not hiding this from her anymore. When I reach her, I take her wrists—gently, carefully—and pull her arms out, away from her body, letting my cock bob, hard and erect, between us.
She resists for half a second, a tiny whimper catching in her throat, but then she lets me. Lets me hold her arms out to her sides so I can see all of her.
"You balanced him," I tell her. "You delivered justice. Real justice. For Posie. For dozens of others, Scarletta. All those girls whose names we'll never know. You saved dozens more who would've come after them if he'd lived another year, another five, another ten."
"I didn't even decide, Caleb. It just—. I just saw his eyes and I knew, ya know? I knew he was gonna—"
"Shhh," I say, putting a finger against her lip. The blood is still wet. I drag my finger through it, smearing it. Painting her face with it.
She lets me. Not even a flinch. She stares into my eyes like I'm her God. I place my hand on her cheek, look lovingly down at her. I let my thumb trace along her jawline, feeling the tacky warmth of blood there. I can practically hear her heart beating.
"Is your pussy wet?" I ask, my voice dropping. "Please, Scarletta. I need to know. Did it make you wet?"
Her mouth falls open. She begins to say something. Stops. Just… stares at me.
I cup her whole face with my hands now. I press my cock into her stomach.
My sickness poking in to her. "You can answer honestly.
Even if it's no. You can tell me. And if it is no, then…
then we'll clean up and I'll take you home.
Don't worry about him. I'll take care of him too.
You don't have to worry about anything."
I let out a breath. Blink. Swallow.
"But if it's yes, Scarletta. Then… then I would like to fuck you right now. Right here. With his blood all over you. With his destroyed body at our feet. Because this… this isn't my sickness. This is my dream."
Her eyes search mine. She takes a breath. Holds it. Lets it out with her words. "Why… why don't you check for yourself."
I almost come. Right there. With nothing but her request to spur it. But I hold it in because finally—finally—it's happening.
I've found someone.
Someone just like me.
Someone not only willing to balance the scales, but to take payment in a way that breaks all the rules.
Just like her story.
I slide my hand down her stomach. Across the waistband of her panties. And then inside.
Fuck.
She's drenched.
Not wet. Not aroused. Drenched. Her pussy is soaked, slick heat coating my fingers the instant I touch her.
I have to close my eyes. Have to force myself to breathe through my nose, slow and controlled, because my cock is already twitching and I'm dangerously close to losing it right here with nothing but my hand in her underwear.
She killed a man. She pulled the trigger and watched him die. And her pussy is dripping for it.
I open my eyes and find her watching me. Waiting. Her lips parted, chest heaving, blood drying on her face in dark streaks.
"Good girl," I whisper.
She moans.
The sound breaks something in me. I push two fingers inside her, curling them, and she gasps, her hips bucking forward to meet my hand. She's so wet I can hear it—the obscene squelch of her pussy clenching around my fingers as I fuck her with them.
"You're just like me," I tell her. "You've always been just like me."
"Caleb—" Her voice cracks.
I pull my hand out of her panties and bring my fingers to my mouth. Her taste explodes across my tongue—salt, and musk, and something darker underneath. Something that tastes like adrenaline and fear and the blood-bright edge of death.
I drop to my knees.
The concrete is cold and hard, and Ryan's blood is spreading toward us in a slow creep, and I don't care.
I hook my fingers into the waistband of her panties and drag them down her thighs.
She steps out of them, and then she's bare from the waist down, standing in nothing but her coral sports bra with a dead man three feet away.
I spread her pussy lips apart with my fingertips and press my tongue into her sick arousal.
She cries out, her hands flying to my head, fingers tangling in my hair. I lick into her, tasting that same darkness, that same violence. My tongue finds her clit and I suck it between my lips, and she makes a sound that's almost a scream.
I eat her like I'm starving. Like she's the only thing that's ever mattered. My tongue works her clit while my fingers push back inside, two and then three, stretching her open. She's grinding against my face now, fucking my mouth, and I can feel her thighs trembling against my cheeks.
"Caleb—Caleb, I'm going to—"
I pull back.
She whimpers, desperate and broken, and I stand up and take her by the hair.
I pull her head back so she's looking up at me, and then I guide her down.
She goes willingly, sinking to her knees on the blood-spattered concrete, and when I press my cock against her lips she opens her mouth without being told.
I push inside.
Her mouth is hot, and wet, and perfect. I slide deeper, feeling her throat flutter around me, and she gags but doesn't pull away. I hold her there, my cock buried in her throat, and I look down at the blood smeared across her forehead, her cheeks, her chin.
She's the spitting image of the tattoo on my sternum. The one crafted by Posie Little herself. The girl who just got justice.
"Take my cock," I tell Scarletta. "Take all of it."
She does.
I fuck her mouth with slow, deliberate strokes, watching her eyes water, watching drool and blood mix on her chin. She's making desperate little sounds around my cock, and her hand has slipped between her own thighs, fingers working her clit while I use her throat.
I pull out before I come. I'm not finished with her yet.
I haul her up by her hair and spin her around, bending her over a hay bale. Her ass is perfect—round and pale, presented for me. I kick her legs apart and line myself up with her entrance.
I slam inside.
She screams. Not in pain—in relief. In finally getting what she needs. I fuck her hard and deep, my hips slapping against her ass, one hand fisted in her hair and the other wrapped around her throat. She's so wet I can hear it, can feel her pussy gripping me like she never wants to let go.
"You killed him," I growl in her ear. "You pulled the trigger and his blood is all over you and your pussy is soaking my cock."
"Yes," she gasps. "Yes, yes, yes—"
I reach around and find her clit. She's so swollen, so sensitive, and when I circle it with two fingers she shatters. Her pussy clamps down on me, milking my cock, and I follow her over the edge with a groan that tears out of my chest.
I come inside her.
I fill her with it, pulse after pulse, and she takes every drop while Ryan's blood dries on both of us.
When it's over, I stay buried inside her, my forehead pressed against her shoulder, both of us breathing hard.
The barn smells like sex, and death, and blood.
And for the first time in my life, I don't feel alone.
For the first time in my life, I feel… balanced.