10. Trapped
Trapped
Pike loomed over her, a figure blocking out the moon, and Marlowe laughed.
The paper-thin lines on her legs burned and Marlowe set her palms on Pike’s slimy chest and shoved.
“The fuck is your problem, huh? This a weird mating thing you got going on or what?” Marlowe shoved her again, swiping her nails across her chest and this time Pike gave way, a guttural trilling wrenching from her as she drew back.
Rolling to her knees, Marlowe lunged at her.
They landed at the lake’s edge with a splash and she grappled with her, tendrils stinging at her face.
She caught Pike’s knobby wrists under her hands and pinned her, hip-to-hip as she sat astride her.
The creature writhed and thrashed and trilled, lips peeled back in a snarl.
Finally, slowly, she quieted.
Pike was starving, and her complacency scared Marlowe more than the dark water.
The sting from her tendrils faded and they traced the outline of Marlowe’s face. Pike made a burbly sound in the back of her throat and tugged her wrists away from Marlowe's hands. Warily, she loosened her grip, her hands curling in the mud on either side of Pike.
Marlowe leaned in when Pike’s cool hands prodded at the bottom of her soaked shirt and peeled the edge from her tense stomach.
The body floated in the lake behind them, but Pike’s hands drifted along Marlowe’s shorts, making no move to leave. Marlowe suddenly understood starvation wasn’t the reason the creature gave into her.
Pike was right where they wanted to be.
And this time, Marlow wasn’t venom-bound.
She fumbled at the button of her shorts and warmth flushed across her stomach as she ripped at the zipper.
Heather wouldn’t be far behind, but Marlowe’s cunt was drenched and a flame licked along her spine when Pike touched her.
They were insistent, demanding, and Marlowe knew Pike giving into her was nothing more than amusement for them.
Pike was using her as much as she was using them.
Once Heather was here, and gone, and Pike took away the mark on Marlowe’s palm, they’d be done. Her mark pressed flush against the heat of Pike’s hand as she guided her hand against her slick cunt.
The last time. This was the last time, even if Marlowe gave in and somehow got Pike away from this lake. They wouldn’t be bound anymore after Heather died and Pike released her; there would be no reason for Marlowe to ever see her again.
But was anything ever that easy?
Heather could still sweet-talk, unless Marlowe took a knife to her tongue and forced it down her lying fucking throat. Heather could convince Pike. Scales on smooth legs, hands on mottled skin, a marked palm tying Heather to Pike’s Lake until Marlowe was abandoned again before she could leave.
Marlowe had irrational thoughts. She knew this.
She could work through most of them. But the thought of Pike casting her aside buried itself in her mind as Pike sank two fingers in her cunt.
Her webbing stretched against Marlowe’s aching clit, pressing, rubbing, and Marlowe viciously hated how gentle it was.
She caught Pike’s wrist and drove her long fingers deep, a gasp leaving her.
Marlowe wanted it to hurt.
Sex had always hurt, always been shadowed by boredom or the fear of being caught, or the loathsome feeling of murder, of wrapping her hands around Heather’s neck or a thousand other scenarios.
Marlowe couldn’t imagine a time where it didn’t, and so she made it hurt, made Pike stab her fingers into her over and over, trying to loosen the knot in her stomach while her cunt clenched around slick, mottled flesh.
She would leave them in this stinking lake and never look in her rearview once tonight was over. A frustrated sound wrung out of Marlowe, and she hated that the thought of leaving dragged her back from the brink.
Even when Pike cocked their head, hand still buried in her, rough, just like Marlowe wanted it, she couldn’t look them in the eyes.
Through the foggy haze, Pike took her wrist and drew it toward her swollen scales. Under hot, slick skin, Marlowe’s fingertips grazed against layered rings of teeth.
Pike’s fingers curled deep inside her, and the creature bared its teeth as it drew a low groan from Marlowe. She hated this. She hated it. She had to give it a fair chance.
“They’re coming for you,” Marlowe panted, hips jerking against Pike’s hand, cunt-teeth nipping at her fingertips. “They’ll hunt you, but I’ll get you out. I’ll come back for you.”
There was no reason for her to make an honest, damning promise.
None unless she was trying to protect herself, take any shred of evidence including Pike with her.
She told herself self-preservation was all her promise was for.
She didn’t care what happened to Pike, it made no difference to her whether this strange creature lived or died.
Pike leaned in, drawing Marlowe closer with fingers hooked in her cunt, and Marlowe came with a shuddering, desperate cry, doubled over Pike for wave after wave until it passed, and she was in her body again, chest heaving, coming down slowly, slowly—
Warmth pulsed around Marlowe’s hand, hot, squeezing. Bones grated under her tendons and cunt-teeth snapped at her fingers. Her palm burned like she’d thrust it in boiling water.
Marlowe pulled away with a hiss. Lightheaded and stupidly slow, heart thudding in her chest, she frantically scrubbed her hands against her muddy shirt to lessen the burning.
Heat licked up her wrist like fire and she plunged her arm into the lake as a strangled sound left her.
Flames reached the crook of her elbow and she let out a choked gasp.
Then it was gone, fading down her arm, her wrist, tingling at her fingertips before leaving her empty. Pike watched her from the shallows, unmoving. Marlowe’s hand went as ice-cold as the body tangled in the bulrushes.
And then she understood.
Marlowe hadn’t agreed to bring Heather to Pike. She had only bargained with a body, and she’d brought a body. Pike was only here to collect what Marlowe had promised so their agreement could be complete.
Even if it was too soon.
Marlowe scrambled to her feet, hands clenched at her sides. If she didn’t look, it wasn’t true. She took one shaky step closer to Pike.
Pike slid back toward the water, an uncertain listlessness to the movement of her tail.
“I brought you a body,” Marlowe said, mouth silt-sticky and voice raw.
Pike’s features grew sullen. A short trill clipped from her.
Yes.
Trembling, Marlowe turned her hand over.
Her palm was smooth.
The skin, unbitten.
Any sign of the supernatural bond tethering her to this lake, to Pike itself, had been washed clean.
“Not yet,” Marlowe rasped. “He’s not the one, there’s another—”
But Pike splashed into the lake. Ripples trailed her as she took the body she was promised.
Marlowe wanted to beg. Wanted to plead, like she was again banging on a locked door and shouting until her voice cracked.
But a stubborn, aching silence fell over her.
Nothing bound Marlowe to this lake now except a grudge she had to reconcile tonight.
She curled her hand into a fist, making crescent-moon marks in a palm which no longer carried evidence of a truce.
The frogs resumed their steady, incessant chirping in the bulrushes. Pike did not resurface.
Marlowe was glad.
Lies.
Marlowe never wanted to see her again.
Another lie.
Marlowe could take care of Heather by herself.
Couldn’t be a lie.
Marlowe sat on the shoreline of Pike’s Lake, alone. Washed up in the bulrushes was the wreckage of the rowboat from the night everything started, and she knew she needed to move, needed to scrape together another plan.
Loneliness had been a steady fixture in Marlowe’s life.
Abandoned when she dared to let another girl kiss her, when her fears weren’t deemed as important, when she had nothing left to give.
This was just another Wednesday. But it wasn’t, because this was her own fault.
Marlowe had bargained a body in exchange for freedom and Pike had been more honest with her than Marlowe had ever been with herself.
She hated Heather. She wanted her dead. And she wanted Pike to do it, not only because she was a coward, but because there was something there, deeper than just a mark, and she had tried desperately to ignore it. But now Pike was gone.
Marlowe set her jaw, moving leaden legs. Pike wasn’t coming back, and she needed a plan. If she had to—
Something cracked into the side of her face and Marlowe slammed to the ground, tasting sand and blood.