Chapter 16
MIA
He towers over me, his eyes glowing in the dark. With only the light from the moon streaming in between us, I am horrified. Shaking. Near death.
He wraps an icy hand around my throat while unzipping my jeans with the other. “I wish they could hear how loud your heart is beating.”
In the flesh, he’s even more monstrous. Exquisite but terrifying.
His antlers stretch out farther, higher than I remember.
His chest is muscular, expertly carved as if he were a stone or marble statue in a museum.
Each crevice is etched like a hard line, chiseled to perfection and coated in a slight sheen of sweat despite the frosty air.
“Just take what you want and leave. I-I’m tired of fighting.” The truth is, I’m drunk as fuck and restrained to a tree, by an actual tree, so I’m not stupid enough to think I’m getting out of this. I could scream, but no one would hear me.
Bones is at the garage working on his bike, Aries is probably off murdering someone in Hemlock, Draven is back at Blackwell Manor, knee-deep in a cask of gin, and Nox is trapped at Harker Mansion. And I’m out here, alone with the Skelker.
No one is coming to save me. So I might as well give in.
He lifts up my shirt and palms my belly. A rush of heat pours out from him. “But I want to hear you scream for me.” His hand is smooth and soft, a strange surprise. I don’t know why, but I expected his flesh to feel scaly or rough.
“Please. I’m cold. And scared.” A pain sears between my brows. I pinch my eyes shut.
“Not for long, dark one.” He moves closer, nestling his body into mine. His hand trails lower, inching closer to the edge of my panties. But he pauses to press his palm into my belly, pinning me harder against the tree trunk.
Heat floods my body, and a fuzziness fills my veins like a toxin. “What are you doing to me?”
“Relaxing you. But not too much. I want you to feel everything I do to you. And I want you to remember it.” He slips his hand inside my panties and cups my pussy.
I gasp, my breath hitching. “No. Let me go. Please.” Fuck. Tiny little jolts, like bursts of electric shocks, start setting off inside me. Like sparklers at a picnic on Poison Era Day.
“Shhh. Scream or be quiet. But don’t beg. It’s beneath you, dark one. You are too fucking interesting to beg.” The hand he has around my throat tightens.
I gaze up into his amber eyes and wonder if the deer skull is fused to him. Or maybe it’s a mask. Can he take it off? Does he look hideous and grotesque underneath? Or is it his face now? Maybe it’s something the devil does to those who do his bidding…
I can’t help but squirm against his hand. It’s stirring a heat in my core that makes me want to chew off my own arm in protest. “I will not be quiet.”
The Skelker grins, but it’s full of malice, jarring in its vulgarity.
And yet I notice how full his lips are. How soft. His gaze follows mine while his tongue flicks out in response. He licks his lips, showing off the pronged tip. “Yes, it can do that… And better than those whom you’ve had before.”
“I don’t care,” I lie. He’s not in my head and yet he still seems to know what I’m thinking.
“And yet you throb against me,” he hisses.
Well, fucking move your hand, I want to scream.
But I don’t want to give him what he wants. Especially since he’s not giving me what I want. I flail my wrists in an attempt to free them from the vines. If I can get at least one of them out, I’ll take a swing at him. I just need to aim low so I don’t crack my fist against the deer skull.
The vines pull tighter.
He snickers. “You will go when I let you go, Mia. And not a moment before.”
The cadence in his voice is more melodic out in the open than it was in my head. In my head, he was screaming. Out here he is seducing me, luring me into his trap. Well, he’s already succeeded. I’m caught in his web. And now he’s just toying with his food before he eats it.
“I can feel your heart racing in your cunt. I bet I could make it explode.” He snarls, snapping his teeth in my face as he plunges a bony finger inside me. “I could also kill you in the same ways that set your body alight with need.”
Fuck.
I bite my lip so hard I break the skin. The taste of metal fills my mouth.
He pushes inside without any coaxing. I’m so fucking slick he doesn’t need any help reaching all the way back into my core.
In the blink of an eye, he’s stroking my G-spot, eliciting noises from me that I’ve only ever heard animals make.
I bite down harder. My lips will no doubt be mutilated by the end of the night. “I don’t want this,” I rasp.
“Oh, but I do.” He tilts my head up and licks across my lips, his pronged tongue quivering as it laps at my blood, my self-inflicted wound.
“You taste like mine. Dark, spicy, cold, and muddied like a wet grave. Your demons, your pain, your lust… mine.” He flicks his tongue inside my mouth, urging me to let him in.
I gasp when our tongues collide, his scissoring mine in a frenzy to swallow me whole. And then the unspeakable happens. I moan into his mouth. And his hands become weapons.
Fuck.
“I accept your submission,” he whispers into my ear before continuing to lick every inch of my mouth. He sucks my chin then drags his pronged tip down my neck and across my collarbone.
Black spots cloud my vision. I moan again when he adds a second finger inside me before thrusting hard again. I sway against the tree, offering him more of me as my hips push out and my pussy stretches. “No. Stop. I don’t…”
I can’t even finish my sentence because I’m cumming hard in his hand. Tears run down my cheeks as the most unhinged orgasm I’ve ever felt wrecks me. My legs vibrate, collapsing against the tree. I would be on the ground if it weren’t for the vines pinning me to the trunk.
He licks my tears while he milks me. “Shhh. Scream or be quiet. Those are the only choices you have.” He rubs his thumb in circles around my clit. “Begging brings punishment. Don’t make me tell you again.”
I grind my pussy into his palm, desperate for more friction. I’m frantic, wild, and as fucking feral as the wolves that howl through the trees. “Oh. Fuck. No. I can’t…”
Two sharp points pierce the crook of my neck. And I scream.
He growls as he sucks the blood from my torn flesh. He laps at the wound, caressing it as much as he probes it. I drown in his abyss. In the sensations of both excruciating pain and divine pleasure.
“Yes, my love. Scream. Cry. Moan for me.” He flicks his fingers hard against my clit and slaps the slit of my pussy. “I will rub you raw.”
A moan rumbles from my chest, escaping my lips before I can stifle it. He is breaking me. Killing me slowly. But I feel like I’m already dead. Even though I can never truly die.
That is my curse. The bargain I made for Nox. Now this is my fate. To be forever brought to the edge of death and ecstasy, only to never have a full release. The Skelker will never let me go. I know this in my blood.
I will take. Take. Take. What’s mine.
Fuck he’s in my head again, but he’s right here too. How is that possible?
Take. Take. Taken…
He slaps my pussy again, and I jerk forward, thrusting myself into his hand. These little stings leave me throbbing and aching for more. Fuck.
Sssssss…. Once. Before the before, before. Lost. Never Found. Gone. Taken. Reborn. Remade. Monster. Skelker.
“Take me? Or someone took you? I can’t leave with you. You have to let me go,” I plead again despite his threats to make me suffer for begging.
I am your violence. Your death. He hisses, his tone changing.
He’s not speaking, but I can hear him so loud in my head. If my hands were free, I’d cradle my skull. “What are you trying to say? Please. I don’t understand.”
He slips his finger inside me again. Sssssss… Sonny… my before, before. Sonny. Sonny.
My mind feels flayed, split open, as another orgasm tears through me. But I’m trying to focus. “Sonny? Sonny Crane?” Oh. My. God.
Shhh. Scream. No one can hear.
My head spins as I coat his fingers with fresh cum. I can’t focus. “Wait… stop. What about Sonny? Do you know what happened to him? Do you know something?” I don’t care about my orgasm anymore. I try to jerk away from him, but the vines grip me tighter. Fucking hell.
Lost. Taken. Became.
“Enough with the riddles. Tell me what you know about Sonny.” I am snarling, a trembling ball of rage and cum and too much tequila.
He wraps both hands around my neck. “I was him. Am. No. Was… No more. Sonny,” he whispers against my mouth.
Oh, fuck. No. I shake my head, desperate to get away from him. “This is another one of your tricks. No. I don’t believe you.”
He caresses my lips with his, hot and tingling. “No tricks. Ask him about the river… Ask him about… la hombre del agua.”
My stomach drops into my ass. How the fuck am I going to explain this to Bones? To Lettie?
They won’t believe me. How could anyone? Because this… is not their brother. Not anymore. No. It can’t be.
The vines retract, and I fall to the ground. When I look up, he’s gone. And I’m alone with soaked panties in the middle of the forest. What the actual fuck?
Sonny Crane is alive. And he’s the Skelker. My Skelker.
Fuck.
If I thought walking home was going to be a challenge before, I failed to consider what it would be like trying to do it with wet panties, a pounding headache, and a gash in my neck.
In fact, if it weren’t for those three things, I’d question if any of tonight actually happened.
Luckily for me, Aries’s house is closer than Harker Mansion.
So I quickly cross the path by the pines and beeline it straight for his place.
The porch light is on, but the house is dark.
I trot up the cobblestone path to his front door and punch in the security code as fast as I can.
The shadows lurk on the edges of his property like bad omens.
Every hair on my body is raised. There isn’t much that scares me, but he does.
And all the ways I’m bound to him. Sonny fucking Crane. Fuck.
I fumble with the code in my exhaustion. “Come the fuck on,” I grumble.
When the door finally unlocks for me, I rush in and lock it back up faster than I can take my next breath. Which I realize is pointless because the Skelker can’t be stopped with doors or walls. He can get to me whenever he wants.
I push another sequence of buttons on Aries’s control pad and breathe a sigh of relief when all the lights in the house come on. It’s a comfort, despite the fact that it’s just an illusion of safety. I stomp over to his bar and pour myself a double shot of top-shelf whiskey.
My hands tremble around the crystal glass as I down it in one sip. At this point, the tequila buzz is completely gone, and now I just need something to make my teeth stop chattering.
I wipe a dribble of it off my lips with the back of my hand and wince. The movement tweaks my shoulder in just the right way that it pulls at my torn flesh, reminding me that he fucking bit me. And I liked it. Ugh. What is wrong with me?
“For fuck’s sake, get your shit together, Mia,” I mutter to myself.
I pour another double shot of the peppery liquor and head upstairs.
It’s late, and I’m exhausted. I’d love a hot shower, but I can’t be on my feet any longer. I should probably have my bite marks looked at too. But all I want is to crawl into Aries’s king-size bed and fall asleep inside his six-hundred-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets.
Before I drift off, I type out a text message to Bones. I’m sorry. Come find me, first thing in the morning. But I don’t send it. Nothing sounds right. How do I tell the man I love that his dead brother is not dead but actually a fucking monster?
I erase the text and reach inside Aries’s top drawer.
Relief floods me when I find what I’m looking for.
I sit up and eye the bright-lavender vial.
Nightshade. I know I told them that I’d take it easy on the poison, but this is the only way I’m going to get any sleep tonight.
It’s the only way to keep Sonny Crane out of my fucking head.
I down the whole vial for good measure and sink back against the thick pillows. It’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission anyway. My eyelids flutter as the toxin races through my bloodstream. “Sorry, Bones,” I murmur before my world goes black.