Chapter 17
ARIES
“Everything okay?”
Bones furrows his brow before setting his phone down. “Yeah, just Lettie texting me. She’s hanging out with Mia at Duff’s. Girls’ night or something.”
“I’ll send a text to Duff and let him know to keep an eye on them.”
“Already done,” he grumbles.
“So what’s your fucking problem, then?” He’s been giving me the stank eye ever since I got to the garage.
He glares back at me. “You kept it from me. Mia and the poison. We don’t have secrets between us, Ries. Not since we were kids. And you remember how that ended up.”
I shift against the leather cushions, annoyed by his tone. “Like you tell me everything that happens between you and Mia?”
He stalks toward me, towering over me in a white muscle tank that shows off every ripple of his chiseled physique.
“I do if it affects her safety. For fuck’s sake, Ries, she’s built up a stronger immunity to poison than me.
And I grew up with it. She’s had access to it for less than a year.
You didn’t think for one second that something was going on with her? ”
I stand up abruptly, forcing him to take a giant step back.
I’m so fucking sick of everyone expecting me to be perfect.
I’m not the prodigal son or the hero or the loving boyfriend.
No. I’m a fucking asshole with a hankering for corpses.
“I have my own shit to deal with, Bones. Mia is a grown woman. It’s not any of our jobs to babysit her. ”
He comes at me and shoves me back down onto the couch. “I guess I should be asking you, what your fucking problem is, then. Hmm? Is this about your sister? When will it be enough? How many of them are you going to kill?”
I turn my head and sigh. “All of them. It might be enough when every last one of them is bleeding out in front of me. But it’s hard to make amends for the crimes my father committed against his only daughter.” I’m annoyed because Bones would feel the same fucking way if it were Lettie.
His face softens. He tugs my chin gently toward him. “Just promise me you won’t lose yourself in the blood of your enemies… I love you, Ries. Remember that next time you fucking lie to me.”
Fucking hell. This man is insufferable. I tug on his waist, jerk him forward, and unzip his jeans. “I didn’t lie; I just omitted. It’s very fucking different.”
His breath sputters when I free his cock through the flap in his boxers. “Is this your way of apologizing?” he rasps.
I lick my lips. “Something like that.” I draw in a deep breath before taking his cock inside my mouth.
His lips part in instant gratification as he grabs the back of my head. “Oh, fuck. Ries.”
I suck hard, satisfied with the way his thick cock throbs against the insides of my cheeks. I moan and twirl my tongue around his swollen tip. A dribble of pre cum lands on my lips, and I lick it off as I squeeze his balls in my palm. “You know it turns me on when you get angry.”
He threads his fingers through my hair, lightly tugging on my icy-blond strands. “That’s why you deliberately piss me off all the fucking time. You’re such an asshole.”
I wrap a hand around him and stroke up and down as I coax him into my mouth until he hits the back of my throat. I moan louder as I feel him constrict and throb.
“Oh, fuck,” he rasps. “I’m gonna cum so fucking fast.”
My gag reflex is nonexistent, so I still myself with him halfway down my throat. His balls swell in my palms. I roll them back and forth between my fingers.
“Ries… Fuck!” He digs his fingers into my shoulders as he unleashes.
“Mmm,” I murmur as I drink his thick, hot cum. It goes down easy like expensive liquor.
His body contorts when I slip a finger inside his anus, his legs trembling through each violent thrust.
“Oh, yeah. Oh. My. Fuck… Ries.” His knees buckle, and I catch him in my lap. I wrap my arms around his muscular thighs and coax him down to the couch until he’s lying flat on his back.
I release his cock with a pop and lick the remaining cum off my swollen lips. “Thatta boy. Let it all go. Just breathe into it.”
His legs shake violently as more of his cum gushes out. I stroke him through it, caressing his ridges gently to draw his pleasure out even more. “Oh, shit. I can’t fucking stop. Fuck.”
“Don’t ever forget the ways I can break you,” I whisper.
“Mmm, yeah.” He rocks his hips, his legs spread wide open as I thrust in slowly.
I jerk him off with my free hand as I control every inch of his pleasure. Every fucking drop of his cum belongs to me tonight. “Good boy. You look so fucking hot right now. Not so angry anymore, are you?”
His chest heaves, his lips quivering as he grips the sides of the couch. “Oh, I’m still mad as hell,” he mutters breathlessly.
I chuckle. That’s one of the things I love about us. We can fuck, fight, fuck again, and then go right back to being angry like it’s our rightful foreplay. He whines in protest when I remove my finger from his ass.
“I should get going. I have a date with a soon-to-be corpse.” I suck his sweat off my finger before springing up from the couch.
He grabs a towel from the side table and cleans himself off while glaring daggers at me again. “Be careful, Ries. You should really let me go with you. You need someone to have your back.”
I shake my head and tuck a corner of my shirt back into my pants.
“Nah. This is something I have to do alone. For Lib.” I know how badly he wants to take my pain away.
Or at least help me vent my frustrations.
But the things I do to these predators… I don’t want him to have those images in his head.
Not because he would judge me, I know he wouldn’t.
It’s just that once you see it, you can’t unsee it.
I will have to live with that as penance for my destruction.
“Text me when you’re done and back home. I will track your location if I don’t hear from you.” Bones tugs me forward by my belt loop.
I press my forehead against his, my cock swelling. “I will. You don’t have to worry about me, baby. I’m Aries fucking Thorn.”
He laughs and tilts his head up. Our lips brush, and I pull him closer.
He thrusts his tongue into my mouth, moaning, hungry for more.
I kiss him back hard and unrelenting, wishing I could bend him over a table and fuck him all night.
But the chaos in my head won’t quiet until I’ve spilled more blood.
I pull back and gasp for air. “I really have to go now. I’ll text you as soon as I leave Hemlock Valley.”
“Please, stop! Why are you doing this?” The sniveling, gray-haired man looks to be in his sixties, a little younger than my father.
I look up at him and smile. His hands are bound to a set of thick chains that suspend from the ceiling. I push his legs so they sway back and forth, his bare ass jiggling under the fluorescent lights. “Because bad men need to suffer the consequences of their actions. This is your judgment day.”
I make another tiny cut into his flesh, on the back of his left thigh. It’s these little wounds that bleed the most. They’re the most agonizing as they grow collectively together, becoming one major trauma to the body.
His cries are pathetic and completely ineffective on me. I want to hear him scream.
“Do you remember how you strung up my sister in your penthouse like this?” I circle him, twirling the knife in my hand. “Did she beg you to stop? Or was she incoherent from the drugs you gave her?”
His limbs shake violently as I wave the knife over his cock. “Fuck. P-please. It was a fair transaction. I paid a lot of fucking money for that weekend. She behaved so well…”
With a flick of my wrist, I graze the tip of his cock with the flat of the blade—a warning.
A preview. The notion of my twin behaving for any man is absurd.
They fucking sedated her. “She wasn’t yours to purchase,” I growl through gritted teeth.
She was just a teenager. Fucking monsters.
But I already knew that. From the time I was a young man, I knew the kind of people my father did business with.
He kept me away from most of it while he was throwing Libra into the lion’s den.
What they didn’t realize was that they didn’t break her.
No. She came out the other side a lioness.
A warrior goddess with more grit in her pinky finger than this man has in his entire body.
And too bad for them that I’m her mirror image, her psycho knife-wielding twin without a conscience or an ounce of remorse.
I’m a stone-cold, take-no-fucking-prisoners lunatic in a designer suit.
“This is my favorite part of my day. Getting to torture you the way you did her.” I make a tiny incision below his belly button.
He sniffles, snot dribbling onto his upper lip. “It was all sanctioned by the Nocturnus elders. We trade assets, stock shares, and poison for party favors. That’s what we do.”
Fucking hell. What the fuck did he just call my sister? “Party favors?” I yell in his face. “She’s a human being. And she was just a teenager… Well, all the elders are dead now. There’s a new generation in power. No more party favors allowed.”
“Fine. I’ll give you whatever you want. Please. I’m sorry. You were just a boy back then too. We didn’t know it would anger you. Just tell me what you want.” This man has worshipped predators his entire life. He is one himself. But so am I. And I’m much bigger. Deadlier.
“I want to watch you bleed out. Then I’m going to desecrate your corpse. I will take pictures of it and send them to your wife. To your daughters.” He screams when I dig my knife into his belly and drag it down to the base of his cock.
“In the silence and stillness of their own grief, they will know why this has happened to you. Because men like you wear your perversions on your sleeves, despite thinking you’re so very clever at hiding them. Men like you exude filth. It fucking permeates around you like a disease.”