Chapter 16
DRAVEN
H is hand is on her back. Why the fuck is his fucking hand on her fucking back?
Murder moves to the top of my list tonight.
I shoot off a text to Bones and Aries while I wait for Duff to pour me a gin, my fingers are shaking as I type. If Mia thinks she can run around my town doing whatever she wants, she’s sorely mistaken. As if our little party in the woods didn’t make my message clear enough. It’s time I remind her again.
I grab my glass and stalk toward my dark little temptress.
Her eyelids flutter when she stares up at me, her throat bobbing as she tries to swallow down her nerves.
I snatch the shot of tequila from her hand before she can take a sip and set it on the edge of the pool table. “You’re really trying to earn your nickname, aren’t you, Trouble?”
She edges away from the big dumb-looking oaf with his hand on her back. “What I do is none of your business, Draven.”
Everything in this town is my business. She’ll learn . “You should be home signing papers and packing, not prancing around like a whore.”
“Whoa, watch your mouth. Where I come from, we don’t talk to women like that,” the blond idiot interjects.
If I could murder him with my mind, I would. But I’m going to enjoy doing it with my bare hands instead. “Well, maybe you should go back to where you’re from. This is Ever Graves, and here we don’t meddle in business that doesn’t concern us.”
The oaf side-eyes Mia. “Is this your boyfriend or something?”
She snort laughs out loud. “Um, no. He is whatever the opposite of a boyfriend is.”
I grip the edge of the pool table. “I don’t care what you call me, Mia. But as long as you live in that house, in this town , you will have me breathing down your neck. Keep pushing me, and you’ll see the full extent of my wrath.”
Her eyes darken, but she licks her lips. There’s a slight twitch in her jaw, a telling tick that shows me how her glands salivate for me. “Go fuck yourself, Draven.”
Okay, this is how we’re playing it? I chuckle and reach for her arm. “You’ve had too much to drink. Time to go home.”
Douchebag intercepts me.
“She says she’s not with you, bro.” He holds his pool stick up, waving it at me like he’s declaring it a weapon.
“I’m not your bro. But because you’re not from here, I’ll let it slide. This has nothing to do with you, so I suggest you go back to your buddies over there and have another round on me.” I can sometimes be rational when provoked. But my fuse is fucking short.
He puffs out his chest and laughs. He looks me up and down, sizing me up. This poor bastard assumes because he’s bigger than me that it’s going to be an unfair fight. And it will be. For him.
Mia rolls her eyes. “You can’t throw money at everything you want to go away, Draven. Leave me alone and let me have some fun for once. ”
“No means no, bro ,” the douchebag drawls.
Fuck, diplomacy. I’m going to kill him.
“I’ll wire you money for the damages,” I call out to Duff.
He almost drops the glass he’s buffing. “What damages?”
I turn back to the douchebag. “I know you think you’re a big deal wherever it is you’re from. Let me see if I guess right. You get free drinks at your local dive bar, even though it’s out of pity because you injured yourself playing high school football and never made it to the big leagues. And I bet all the washed-up cheerleaders line up to suck your cock, but you secretly love how your buddies suck it the best—”
“Watch it.” His smug smile fades into a sneer.
“Oh, am I hitting a nerve?”
Mia clutches her neck. “ Draven .”
I inch closer and slide my fingers through the brass knuckles in my pocket. “But you see, this is Ever Graves. And here , I’m in charge. People buy me drinks to stay on my good side. And trust me, you don’t want to be on my fucking bad side. Isn’t that right, Duff?”
The exasperated bar owner shakes his head. “Can you at least kill them outside this time?” he calls back.
I grin but never break contact with the stupid fucking white boy in front of me. “You have two options: walk away and enjoy some free drinks on me or stay right here and see what happens. I doubt anyone will actually miss you.”
His nostrils flare. “How about the option where I beat the shit out of you?”
I laugh in his face. “Yeah, that’s not even remotely close to happening, bro .”
Two of his buddies, who match him in size, move closer, flexing their arms behind him.
Mia grunts in frustration. “Enough, Draven. Let’s just talk about this outside.” She goes to move past him and his little posse, when he grabs her arm and shoves her behind him. His buddies hold her back.
“Okay, everyone, chill, please,” she groans out.
I light up a cigarette and count to ten before I exhale. “So, option four, then?”
He crosses his arms over his chest and cocks his head to the side. “And what’s that? Your girl fucking all three of us tonight while you cry yourself to sleep?”
“Yeah, not helping your cause.” I take another long drag before putting my cigarette out in the palm of my hand.
He wavers slightly as he stares at the smoke singeing off my flesh.
I pull out a vial of nightshade and give him a wink before I shoot it down my throat. “I bet you think this is gonna go your way somehow.”
The guy gasps when he looks back into my eyes. “Your pupils… they’re fucking glowing. What the fuck?”
His two buddies back up with Mia still in their grasp when they hit two hard walls of solid muscle behind them, Aries and Bones.
The distraction breaks their grip, and Mia wrenches free. She charges forward, directing her anger at me instead. “You don’t own me. I can have drinks with whomever I want.”
“I disagree. It’s time for you to leave now. I’ll call Lettie to come back and get you.” All I see is red right now, and she’s only aggravating me more.
Her mouth falls open. “No, Draven. You don’t get to tell me what to do. You’re not my boyfriend or my father.”
I wrap a hand around her throat, startling everyone around us. “Yeah, but I’m sure you’d love to call me both. Especially Daddy .”
She jerks back, desperate to break free from me. “ Never . Now let me go so I can finish hanging out with my new friends.”
I push her up against the pool table. “You mean the ones who said they want to take turns fucking you? I don’t think so, baby girl. That privilege belongs to us. Don’t make me bend you over in front of all these people and remind you how wet I make your pussy.”
“We’ll wait for you outside.” Aries snickers as he and Bones drag the three douchebags out the front door. Duff actually helps them for once. I’m guessing he doesn’t want to mop our mess up off his floor again.
Mia’s pulse beats fast against my fingers, her chest heaving as she struggles to catch her breath. “You can’t have me, Draven. I’m never going to be yours.”
There’s a wistfulness in her tone. Almost like it’s out of her control. I ignore it. “You’ve been mine since the second I decided I was going to destroy you.”
She tilts her head up until our noses almost touch, our lips are close enough to kiss. “First, you think you can steal my land, and now me? All you care about is that poison. And you don’t even own that. So don’t treat me like shit and then expect me to obey your every command.”
This fucking woman is wrecking me. I can’t eat or sleep or even fuck random strangers in bathrooms anymore. And she has the fucking audacity to try and remove herself from any blame?
I tighten my grip around her throat as I press my hips into hers. “ I own you . I. Own. Everything. You hear me, Mia? And I’ll decide what I want to do with the things I own.” My cock stiffens, tenting my pants. Threatening her is my new fucking foreplay. “I think you love being treated like shit. It’s the only language you know… the only thing that makes you cum.”
Her throat bobs as she attempts to swallow with my hand still around it. “Shut up. You don’t know me. I might be depressed and sleep-deprived, and I may have made some questionable choices in the last few weeks, but that doesn’t give you the right to assume that I have a fetish for your toxicity.”
I want to kiss her so I can taste the ache on her tongue. “There’s a saying, ‘When someone shows you who they are, believe them…’ I think I’m only beginning to learn the extensive list of fetishes you have. I eat toxicity for breakfast.” I brush my lips across her cheek and whisper in her ear, “You like it when it hurts because pain is the only thing that lets you know you’re still alive.”
She whimpers as I nuzzle my nose against her temple. “Stay away from me, Draven. Stay away from Harker Mansion. You have no idea the depths of its darkness.”
A sinister memory threatens to resurface, but I push it down and grit my teeth. “This whole town is cursed, Trouble. Every wretched inch of it… I know about your nightmare .”
Her body stiffens as she gazes up at me, her eyes wide and full of fear. “What do you mean?”
Oh, no, you don’t get to act like a brat and then get answers out of me.
I let go of her neck and step back. “Exactly what I said. Now you really need to get home, Mia. I still have to take care of something outside.”
She shakes her head. “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what you know.”
I let out a deep sigh, masking my amusement. “Fine. But you’re going to have to watch me murder your new friends first.”
Her gaze remains fixated on my face as I drive. It’s unnerving. I keep my eyes on the road, my jaw clenched, only glancing in the rearview mirror every few feet to make sure Aries and Bones are still following close behind.
“How far are you going to take this?” The venom in her voice falters between the ache.
I light up a cigarette and roll down the window. The icy wind whips through my SUV like a slap in the face. “There is no line with me. You’re going to learn that tonight. ”
She huffs and looks away. “You know kidnapping is illegal, right?”
“There are no kids here. This ”—I wave my finger in a circle between us—“is what I call consequences.”
She folds her goose-pebbled arms over her chest. “And what about the guys from the bar? They did nothing wrong.”
The audacity astounds me. She still doesn’t get it. “Nothing wrong? I’m guessing you didn’t see the toxin they slipped into those tequila shots, then. I gave them a chance to walk away, and they refused. You’re lucky I showed up when I did. Fuck. I should’ve left you there to learn your lesson.”
She gasps. “What the fuck? How in the hell did you see them slip something into our drinks? You were on the other side of the room.”
I loosen my tie and take a deep breath. “You forget, I drink poison, Mia. I can spot a toxic chemical in liquid from a mile away. You’re welcome.”
I still don’t look in her direction. Her beauty is villainous. I’m already suffocating as it is. I’ll never get the scent of jasmine out of my SUV now. Or the taste of her cherry fucking lip balm off my lips. Fuck. I can see her clenching her thighs together in my periphery, and it’s driving me wild with need. The ache that lives in her body fills the space between us, begging to be satiated.
All I want is to keep my family’s company from falling apart. And the only thing standing in my way is that fucking baneberry. The only one preventing me from having it all is her. So as much as I want to bury my cock inside every single one of her crevices, I can’t. It feels too fucking good.
The best scenario is for her to see us for who we are. Monsters. Villains. Fucking depraved psychos who show no mercy to anyone who crosses us. It’s the quickest way to get her to sign over the deed and run her out of town. The sooner I get this woman out of Ever Graves, the sooner I can get her out of my system. And then I’ll burn every single jasmine bush to the ground.
As I drive through the rusted iron gates, she rests her head against the window, defeated. “The graveyard? How morbidly poetic.”
“They’re going to end up here anyway,” I grumble as I park and kill the engine.
There’s a part of her that still thinks this is a game. That I won’t go through with it. I can see it in her eyes.
“Then what? You drive me home and walk me to my door like a gentleman after a first date?” She snickers.
Oh, poor, little lamb. She really has no idea.
“Something like that.” I exit the vehicle, stalk around to the passenger side, and open her door. She moves to get out, but I box her in. “Don’t you dare scream for them. Or I will do things so unspeakable, it will give you a real reason to scream over.”
She sighs, and her eyelids flutter. Her blue eye hungers while her brown one darkens, her pupils swelling from adrenaline. “What do you know about my nightmare?”
A tinge of jealousy twists in my gut. The thought of him getting to touch her whenever he wants… I press in closer. “I know enough.”
She looks down at her hands. “You don’t know shit.” Her voice is a whisper, raspy, and full of shame.
Good.
Ever since she moved here, the darkness has thickened—expanded like a balloon about to pop. She may not have chosen this curse, but she could resist it. Not everyone has that luxury.
Aries and Bones wrestle two of the jocks out of Aries’s SUV and drag them over, breaking the psychotic energy between us.
“Where’s the other one?” I snap.
Aries smirks. “Dead. In the back seat.”
Mia’s eyes widen. “Please tell me you’re joking.”
“You just couldn’t help yourself,” I quip .
Bones shrugs. “He wouldn’t stop screaming, so I hit him. I forget my own strength.”
The other two are gagged with their wrists bound, their faces as white as ghosts. I light another cigarette and sigh through the exhale. “Let’s finish this so we can go grab a bite to eat. I’m starving.”
I stretch out my hand toward Mia. “Come on. Time to face your consequences.”