Depravity

Chapter 14 Skylar

SKYLAR

He cut me. He fucking cut me.

The act was unhinged. Visceral. Possessive.

A sting pulses through my whole leg. Blood trickles down my thigh.

Knox did that just before he discarded the knife and pulled my fingers, my entire hand, through the cut, slicking them with blood.

My mouth can’t seem to close.

The same man who, seconds ago, gave me the most earth-shattering orgasm did this.

The man who helps me by tearing a strip from his shirt and tying it tight around my thigh, the knot rough and hurried. A makeshift bandage.

He doesn’t look at my face as he ties it, only at the blood staining his hands.

He did this.

When his gaze finally lifts, it’s drenched in dark, depraved obsession.

My mind refuses to acknowledge that this is my new life.

Except it is.

It’s so very real.

That’s why I can’t silence the screams.

Not like Knox cares.

He sees it as a game.

He draws back, holding my wrist as he raises it between us.

My blood-slicked palm glows in the low light.

A predatory smirk curls across his face.

I can’t fucking believe my eyes. He’s daring me to claim I’m repulsed, while I’m bleeding and trembling with the aftershocks of my climax.

I’d tell him I hate it. That I hate him.

I have to. The alternative, admitting the truth that I want him, will destroy what’s left of my sanity.

But no words come out. All I’m capable of is drawing ragged breaths between each horrified scream.

I’m struggling to think—to survive—while he just…stands even taller. Slowly. Casually.

His tongue swipes over his lips, tasting my arousal on them. I must be sick for being turned on by this. He’s fucked me up so badly that I don’t act, don’t even acknowledge the small trickle of blood that trails down my thigh despite Knox’s bandage.

Knox is there, his hazel eyes never leaving mine. His shadow swallows me whole. He cocks his head, dragging his thumb over my bottom lip as if approving of my scream.

The bastard is getting off on it. On my rising panic.

The hot bastard.

Fuck.

The smartest thing to do would be to shut up. To deny him the satisfaction.

I can’t.

Hormones flood my body, tangling with adrenaline and pain until the world spins. Screaming makes everything worse, but it’s the only thing that cuts through it, the only tether I have left to earth.

Otherwise, it’ll look and feel like I’m okay with this.

The thought pushes another wave of tears out of me.

“My girl.” Knox lowers his face to mine, cupping my cheek. “My Skylar.”

His presence and his growly voice do something they absolutely shouldn’t.

They soothe me. They silence me. My tears slow, then stop altogether.

My breath hitches, hands dropping uselessly to my sides as he caresses my jaw.

No. No. I can’t want this. Can’t lean into him. I flatten my clean hand on his chest. Push him away. Hoping my need would go with him.

There’s no use. He won’t budge.

“My thigh, Knox.” My voice shudders. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

“You.”

He’s crowding my space, viciously keeping me in place while he makes me take his lips. His tongue. This feral kiss that I don’t—can’t—want. I can’t.

I need it.

“Get off me,” I whisper between one demanding kiss and the next.

The bleeding’s shallow, barely enough for me to notice the thin line of warmth sliding down my inner thigh now.

The real wound is the betrayal messing with my head.

“What the fuck are you?”

When he puts the tiniest distance between us, I foolishly try to pull him back. Not because I want him. I don’t. I really don’t.

I think.

Maybe I do. But mostly, I’m afraid.

Because he didn’t pull away when I asked him to.

He did it when it suited him.

Nothing he does is forced. Not by me. Not by his family. Not by anyone.

He does what he wants, when he wants. I’ve been stupid to think otherwise. To believe that his family’s rules bound him, that he obeys out of fear or loyalty.

He’s not afraid of them. He’s not scared of anything.

My eyes widen in fear, my heart thrashing wildly.

This unexpected turn of events changes everything. Because while his family’s motives are clear, Knox hasn’t shown me his cards. His soul.

What does he want from me?

What’s going to happen to me?

“Come back.” Kissing, I can handle. I like it. If he leaves, the other vultures will come. They’ll make me suffer. “Please.”

“On your knees.” His command means he’s staying. It should soothe me.

But I’m so scared. “Help me.”

“Don’t remember asking you to talk.”

I’m limp, shocked, reeling from my orgasm. That must be why I’m letting him use me.

“I said on your knees. And Skylar, don’t you dare wipe the blood on your hand on your way down.”

“Why?” I ask, hoping for clarity. For some sort of assurance.

“You aren’t done helping me.” Knox doesn’t wait for me to obey. One hand on the small of my back, he pushes me off the table until my feet hit cement. “On. Your. Knees.”

“I’m scared,” I breathe out. The butterflies in my stomach call me a liar.

My nipples harden from watching Knox fist himself.

I remember the taste of him. The smooth texture.

I’m dying to have him in my mouth again.

“Don’t care.” He strokes himself, and I can’t look away.

Humiliation coils in my throat, thick and tight, choking every breath.

Despite what he’s done to me, resisting him feels unnatural. I’m fighting an insistent, base desire inside of me and losing, fast.

I shake my head, my last attempt at clinging to my sanity. Sweat-slick hair sticks to my cheeks as I do.

I pray for my common sense to kick in, for this need to be cut out of me and…nothing.

No matter how hard I try, I can’t silence the butterflies. The heat. My heart that beats twice as fast for the man who’s responsible for my pain.

I’ve fallen for him.

Fuck, what’s happening to me?

“Skylar, last warning.” Knox rubs himself, root to tip. Seducing me. “Knees to the floor. I fucking need it.”

“What for?” I spit out, my voice hoarse from crying. From the shock. From taking him down my throat. “So you can cut off every part of me once you’re done?”

His hand stops, and he’s leveling me with a serious look that shatters the last of my defenses.

This isn’t a threat. It’s a promise. That he won’t harm me, no matter what.

At that, I fall to the floor.

Surrendering to my fate.

Surrendering to him.

“Maybe…” he starts.

“Maybe what?” My question comes out needy and slightly off. Arousal runs down my thighs, mingling with my blood. “Maybe what?”

Instead of answering, his hand clamps around my wrist, right beneath my bloodied palm.

Gently, as if his cock isn’t bobbing in my face, as if he didn’t just cut me, he brings my wrist closer to his shaft.

The ease with which I submit to him exposes every lie I’ve told myself. I don’t hate it. I don’t hate him.

If I truly did, I never would’ve let him do this to me.

But no, I’m offering myself to my captor. I’m his obedient, lusting ragdoll, consenting to his sick treatment of me.

“Maybe I’m not the monster you think I am.” He presses his thumb to my wrist, making sure not to rub my own blood on his hand. “No, that’s not a maybe. That’s a guarantee. I’m nothing like your sister. Nothing like them.”

He guides my hand to his cock, closing my fingers around it.

My breath stutters. It isn’t fear stealing my air.

The raw sight of my blood smeared on his dick ignites heat low in my belly.

Wet, trembling, fully aware of what he wants from me, I need him.

And because I must be more fucked up than I thought, I look at him from beneath my lashes, hoping he feels the same.

“After Bronwyn said what she did, I…I thought…”

“You thought I was claiming you just so I could kill you, like I told them.” Looming over me, he guides my hand up and down his shaft. My blood slicks his beautiful skin red. “That’s okay. You’ll learn soon enough that I won’t. That I care about you.”

“You don’t even know me.” The words sound sane. Tightening my fingers around him is one of the most irrational things I’ve ever done. “You don’t owe me anything.”

“Fuck,” he groans, forcing my hand to jerk him faster. “I cared the second you ordered those tickets—Motherfucker, that’s good.”

His hips drive into me, helping me stroke him, please him.

The fan creaks, its slow rhythm clashing with the obscene wet sounds of Knox thrusting into my palm.

Then there’s my pulse. I hear it too, the loud, demanding, clinging beat.

“You did?” The question escapes as a breath. A plea.

“Couldn’t think of anything else.” His fist tangles in my hair, his other hand coaxes me to pump him, never to stop, while he basically tells me that he’s been stalking me. “Your eyes. Your lips. Your life. They were mine the minute I looked you up. You’re mine.”

He’s done more than stalk me. He hunted me. And yet here I am, on my knees, the desperate need to be his fueling my following question. “I am?”

The air crackles between us. His nostrils flare.

“The first. The last.” Precum beads at the crown of his cock. He yanks my hair until the roots burn. “The only one.”

My pussy clenches, and it hurts. This emptiness aches.

The need he awakens in me, I’ve never felt that way before. Never thought I could.

More than anything, it’s wrong.

In a last-ditch effort to revert to my old self, I try to pull my hand back.

“Never. You don’t get to tell me no.” His glare pins me, pure command, dark and unyielding. “Unless you want that wound festering…”

Knox tilts his head, voice low, unreadable. I can’t tell if it’s a bluff, and I don’t dare test him.

“You’re gonna pump me until my cum marks your pretty face,” he groans, his speech soaked with lust. “You’ll do it my way. Slow when I say slow, rough when I say rough. Don’t make me repeat myself, Trouble. Understood?”

I whimper. I nod. Desire and fear pull me into the depths of his insanity.

My hand works him through the tremors and the need. Heat sears from the strip of my flesh pressed into my palm.

Jerking him off with my blood as lube is vile. An unspeakable violation. Something that should never exist.

It’s the hottest thing I’ve ever done.

Every rugged groan from him is like a wildfire spreading through me. His thighs twitch, his cock pulses in my hand, and I want more.

His pleasure drives me higher. With every drop of precum, with every smear of my blood on his cock, he pushes deeper into me. Past my body and into my soul.

Maybe that’s why I come to terms with the worst of all the wrongs I’ve done here.

Why I give in. To this madness, this arousal. All of him belongs to me too.

Real ropes and chains aren’t what’s tying us together. His threat isn’t what’s keeping me on my knees, jerking him off.

In fact, this isn’t even about the handjob itself.

This is something else entirely. Something that makes my pulse race and my stomach flutter.

We connect. Spiritually. Viscerally.

In a deranged way that shouldn’t exist.

“You see it too,” Knox deadpans, his hand squeezing over mine, forcing my strokes to keep steady.

“See what?”

“That we belong together.” His thumb rubs my bottom lip, then brushes over the path of my dried tears. Softness against the filthy act he’s making me commit. “That you’ll have me even if it hurts.”

He’s right. I never stood a chance.

Deep down, my heart’s been waiting for Knox my whole life.

“Knox.” I’m overstimulated. Overwhelmed. Dizzy and wanting. “Knox.”

“I’ve got you.”

He pries my hand off him so he can jack off by himself.

My captor focuses on holding me up by my hair, on fucking his fist.

His jaw is pulled tight, brow furrowed, lips pressed together.

His lust is a living, hot, heavy thing between us.

Moans escape me as I watch him, because I can’t help it. The attraction I feel for him is just as intense.

“Lick me,” he bites out, voice hoarse. “Just the tip.”

When I do, he groans. More precum trickles out, his head throbbing.

His abs pull tight, veins pulsing. “Lick me again.”

Starving for him, I obey, this time taking the whole crown into my mouth, licking, sucking out his salty arousal. I don’t know what’s come over me, but I want more.

More of his precum, more of his small, helpless moans. More of his need to suffocate me.

I find his slit with my tongue, flicking the tip over it, then swiping along the underside of his head.

“Fuck. Fuck.” Heat fills me when he swells in my mouth. “Going to come. And you’re going to swallow every fucking drop.”

It isn’t a request.

I wouldn’t have said no even if it was.

Black dots crowd my vision as I obey, taking his cum as he empties himself on my tongue, my lips.

His guttural growl and the taste of him make me clench around nothing, wishing it were him inside me. I moan quietly, exactly how he ordered, each sound timed with the spurts of even more of his release on me.

Once he’s done, he tucks himself into his jeans.

He’s quick to scoop me in his arms, hugging my wrung-out body to his chest.

“Please.” My mouth brushes his throat as I curl closer into him.

“Don’t worry.”

I’m about to pass out, unable to register where we’re going anymore. My eyes won’t stay open.

He’s nothing but shadows and presence. But darkness and possessiveness.

Somehow, though, I’m not scared anymore. Not of him. Not of this.

“I’ve got you.” I feel his words down to my marrow. “I always will.”