Chapter 16 #2
“Are you leaving?” The question sounds so mild. He almost sounds bored, like he couldn’t care what my answer is. He even nods towards the trees, as if to offer me the option.
I look back into the darkness, unsure what the greater danger is. Part of me is sure the trees hold safety, while this house holds anything but.
Another part of me, however, can’t imagine going anywhere except where he tells me to go. At least for tonight.
“Would you let me?” I ask at last, shifting my weight to the balls of my feet before settling back to stand more balanced. “Or would you hunt me down in the forest like prey?”
“I wouldn’t need to,” he replies cheerfully, with a brilliant smile suddenly flashing on his lips. “You’d have a hard time getting home. Even if you tried to follow the road.” The certainty in his voice sends a ripple of unease through me, and I break his gaze to glare at the grass between us.
Then, without a word, I walk back up onto the patio, my steps slow and unsure. He doesn’t speak. Doesn’t goad or taunt or hurry me along. Larkin just stands there, eventually holding out one hand for me to take.
It doesn’t feel like a question or a request. His fingers curl and I immediately lift mine once I’m close enough and my phone is back in my pocket, light off.
His palm is warm under mine, and he wastes no time twining our fingers together before pulling me to him until I’m so close that I can feel the heat radiating off his body like a furnace.
I hate how easy it is to fall into him like this.
Distracted, I let him lead me into the small, well-appointed cabin in the woods, my skin prickling like I’m in danger.
“Where’s Dale?” I whisper, looking around the space inside.
It’s bigger on the inside than I expected it to be, with a loft above that might be a bedroom, and a kitchen connected to the living room with no walls between.
The only open door off the main space seems to be a bathroom, and a soft, warm light shows me it’s nicer than most cabins could ever be.
My gaze roams the cabin as Larkin closes and locks the door.
While a few lights cast a warm glow across the cabin, it’s the large, saltwater tank between the living room and kitchen that draws my eye first. Another door sits closed, off to one side of the kitchen and looking rather suspicious.
Under normal circumstances, it would be innocuous.
It wouldn’t even be noticeable. But given tonight’s events so far…
Well, my eyes land on the door and stay there, as if magnetized. “What are we doing?” I whisper. “Where’s—”
Larkin kisses me suddenly, cutting me off. He jerks me against him to grip my hips in both of his hands, his fingers curling, sinking into my curves. I yelp against his lips when I feel teeth and instinctively roll up to the balls of my feet to kiss him back.
The moment my fingers brush his hair, however, Larkin steps back with a rueful grin and a huff, eyes closed. “We have a game to play,” he tells me slowly, raking a hand through his hair. “I absolutely want to play this game with you too. Just not right now.”
“You really like games, don’t you?” I sigh, my voice thoughtful.
Larkin only looks at me for a moment before he turns, and as I watch, he carefully places my box cutter on the kitchen counter.
Without thinking, I dart forward, my fingers curling around it, and he doesn’t stop me from grabbing the weapon or pocketing it again with my hand clasped to it.
“Don’t be so desperate.” He goes to the door beside the fridge and undoes the latch holding it shut before gesturing for me to go through. “I won’t take it from you again. Not right now, anyway.” With the door open, I tread down the stairs, feeling Larkin just a few steps behind me.
Whatever I expected to find, the basement of the cabin doesn’t check any of my mental boxes. It’s clean, almost obsessively so, and the lights overhead are warm, instead of cold or sterile.
A noise makes me whirl around, and on the far wall, I see Dale writhing and jerking on a chain that binds his leg to a bathtub, though he has a few feet of leeway to make a scene.
“Let me go!” Dale yells, his voice echoing in the enclosed space.
“H-hey you’re from the bar. You’re umm…” He visibly searches his mind for my name, and that alone is enough to make me distance myself from him, even if it’s only mentally.
Belatedly I realize his arms are cuffed in front of him, rendering him unable to use his hands for much of anything.
“Tova,” Larkin interjects from behind me.
“Her name is Tova.” There’s amusement and scorn in his words, though he chuckles like he’s reacting to some inside joke.
“You were in that bar with her for thirty minutes, and you didn’t learn her name?
Well”—he gives me an apologetic smile—“you didn’t exactly learn his, either.
How pathetic.” Larkin lets out a put-on sigh, and my hand tightens around the box cutter.
“Both of you were just using the other for purely selfish means. I know what she wants.” His hand comes up to cup the front of my throat, and he forces me to look back at Dale.
“Tell us what you wanted with her. Tell us your plan, all of those filthy thoughts in your head, Dale. Be honest with me, and I’ll consider letting you go. But only if you’re honest.”
Something in his words feels like a warning. As if he knows more than he’s letting on. Though I don’t know how that could be possible, given that I never met Dale before tonight.
Dale looks at the ground, and yanks on the chain again. “Come on, man,” he pleads, his nose twitching and his mustache moving right along with it. “Can’t you just give me a break? I didn’t do nothin’ to you. Either of you.”
“I told you what we wanted. You want that too, right?” Larkin adds, his nose brushing against my ear.
He’s such a solid, warm weight at my back that I could mistake him for comfort.
But anytime I move, even slightly, his grip tightens around me, letting me know that his arms aren’t here for support.
They’re to keep me from escaping.
“Yes,” I whisper, feeling like I have no other choice. “I want to know.” The words are stiff and awkward as they come out of my mouth, and I shift to the balls of my feet, trying to relieve some of the stress and anxious energy in my legs. It doesn’t work, though, predictably.
“It’s not that much of a mystery,” Dale snaps.
His eyes dart around the basement, like there’s some escape route he hasn’t seen yet.
“I thought you were into me. I thought we were going back to my place to fuck.” He sneers the last word, disgusting teeth bared for a moment before he shrinks back.
“What the hell is wrong with that, huh?”
Larkin hums, his arms still not releasing me. “Nothing at all,” he replies almost cheerfully. “If that’s all you wanted.”
Dale looks down quickly. “You don’t know me,” he breathes. “I don’t know what you want from me.”
“I don’t know you.” Larkin’s words turn a little cruel.
“I only know what you were saying to your friend at the bar when you were getting yourself a refill. Come on,” he cajoles.
“Tell us what you told him. Tell us what you said about Tova. It’s not a secret, right, if you were laughing about it like that? ”
Dale’s face pales. He glances between me and the chain on his leg, and I wonder if he’s considering if he can just yank himself free even if that means his foot doesn’t come with him.
His eyes turn pleading when he looks at me again. “It was just guy talk,” he tells me in a whisper. But if I can hear him, Larkin can too. He must know that, though it doesn’t seem like it.
“Then tell me,” Larkin coerces. “I’m just a guy. So talk.” There’s a warning in his words that makes my skin prickle, and his grip on me feels a little less safe. A little more dangerous.
Dale finally looks away, and his shoulders sag in defeat. He takes a step back, then another, until his knees hit the clawfoot tub he’s chained to. He nearly stumbles and has to catch himself on the lip of it with a small gasp.
“I said—I said I wanted to make you cry,” he admits. “Just a little. That I wanted to hurt you. That you’d probably let me. I told Eddie that I wanted to fuck your holes and hear you scream in pain. I said…” he trails off, glaring down at the floor. “I said I wanted to make you bleed.”
I barely feel Larkin’s hands sliding free from my shoulders. I feel the press of his mouth to my cheek, though, like a searing brand on my skin. A shudder goes through me as he steps away, and instead of responding to Dale, I turn to look at him, surprised to see that he’s headed for the stairs.
“You’re leaving?” I ask, puzzled. But Larkin doesn’t stop until he’s halfway up the stairs, his face barely visible.
“Yeah,” he tells me. “Because if I’m here, you can blame me later. You can say I made you do it. Or that I influenced you. But that’s not how this is going to work, my little monster.” His grin is wolfish, his gaze direct.
“Any choice you make here is on you. Not me.” He tilts his head, watching me shrewdly, studying my face like he can tell what decision I’m going to make.
“I’ll see you upstairs,” Larkin states, instead of making it a question.
Then, with a few more steps and the click of the basement door, he’s gone.
Alone in the basement with Dale, I don’t immediately look at him. I toy with the box cutter in my pocket, my brain listening to the sound of electricity in the light above us.
“It was just guy talk,” Dale says, his confidence coming back now that Larkin is gone. “Look, unchain me, and we’ll get out together. Do you have a weapon? Umm…” He searches his memory, then shrugs. “What did he say your name was?”
The fact he still doesn’t know it feels like an insult to injury, and I snort, rolling my eyes up at him. “You think I’m trapped here?” I ask, pulling the box cutter from my pocket slowly to hold it at my side. His arms jerk in the cuffs, and Dale’s eyes fall on the blade.
“What are you doin’ with that?” he demands. “Did he give you that? Is he threatening you, too?”
“No.” My words remain pensive, and I look up at him finally, taking a step closer that makes him jerk back.
“Actually, I already decided I wanted to kill you tonight. I don’t know if I would’ve gone through with it.
Sorry, Dale.” I give him an apologetic smile and a little sigh.
“I don’t know if I would’ve felt bad enough not to.
You haven’t technically done anything to me. I—”
“You stupid bitch,” Dale snarls, his demeanor flipping instantly, becoming darker and full of rage. His cheeks go red, and he jerks so hard on the cuffs I worry he’s going to dislocate his shoulders. “You planned this? You know that sick fuck upstairs?”
“Not very well.”
“This is ridiculous!” His voice becomes a bellow, and he jerks on his chains again. The leather cuff around his ankle seems to strain, and without warning, Dale breaks free, lunging toward me across the floor.
It isn’t even on purpose.
Not exactly.
When his hands rise to find my throat, his momentum throws his body against me. Dale gasps as the blade of the box cutter sinks into his stomach, and I’m thrown backward, back hitting the wall as I yelp in surprise.
“You stupid, ugly bitch,” he snarls, spittle hitting my face.
I tear the blade upwards as his hands tighten, unable to move independently but still able to choke the shit out of me.
Gasping, I rip one of my hands free and grab him by the hair, wrench one leg between us, and shove him backward hard enough that he hits the floor on his side.
My neck screams and I drag in breath after breath, heart pounding from fear, pain, and exertion. “Fuck,” I whisper, hoarse and barely able to speak. “Fuck you. Fuck you,” I whisper for Dale’s benefit. “You’re ruining everything!”
Coldness like ice replaces the fear within me, and my hands shake from rage, instead of nervousness, as I crawl across the floor with the box cutter in my hand.
“This was supposed to be mine! My choice!” My hands shake as I lift up the box cutter, then plunge it downward once, twice, then three times into Dale’s face.
Every time he screams, trying to sit up, trying to do anything to save himself. The fourth stab catches his eye, skids off his orbital bone, and sinks into the socket to pop the eye like a grape.
His scream echoes in my ears, but pity isn’t on the menu for tonight. “You ruined it!” I scream again with my hands shaking. The blade comes out with a jerk of my hand, and I stab him again and again, the blade never going deep enough to end this quickly for him.
But that’s fine.
He doesn’t deserve that.
By the time he’s not moving, I’m panting, and my arms are sore from exertion.
My clothes are ruined, drenched in blood, and my face drips with it, courtesy of the arterial spray from Dale’s carotid.
When I finally sit back, the box cutter goes skidding across the floor, and I run my bloody fingers through my hair, head in my hands.
“You weren’t supposed to force me,” I whisper, frustration building like an icy dam in my chest. “This was supposed to be for me, you stupid, pathetic little man.”