Chapter 6
Istormed out of the haunted house like I was on fucking fire. Hell, my body felt like it was physically burning everywhere he touched me. My breath sawed through my chest with a damn vengeance, my fists clenched so hard my nails dug into my palms, leaving blood dripping down onto the ground.
The sound of Carrington’s laugh was still inside my fucking head, a phantom I couldn’t tear out despite my best efforts. He’d done it. He’d made me come. My own body had betrayed me in front of him, and now I was soaked.
I wanted to rip myself apart. I wanted to tear every piece of skin off my body and burn any remnants he left…but it was his hands that left more than just marks on my flesh. It felt like a brand on my soul.
How can I burn something that is embedded in my damn psyche?
The bonfire was a smear of orange in the distance, laughter echoing through the maze like a language I could no longer speak.
I didn’t head toward it.
Fuck that.
If I saw Xanthy right now, I would likely punish her for what her brother did. Instead, I veered off the path, deeper, into the woods. Every step was my own way of punching the earth, punishing the one thing I could.
I didn’t stop until the shadows swallowed me whole, allowing the familiarity of darkness like an old friend.
I couldn’t let myself falter. I couldn’t succumb to the darkness that boiled inside me.
I suppressed the need to rip one of those fucking imbeciles out of the maze and flay off their skin, like I itched to do to myself.
A sound slipped throught the night air, just the slightest noise. A shuffle in the dark, a break in the silence that reprogrammed my anger into calculation and trajectory.
A rabbit, small and stupid, frozen in the brush like it knew I was something to fear. My chest heaved harder before I dragged the air into my lungs, holding my breath and remaining silent.
Before I could think, I lunged.
My hands closed around it, its soft fur plush under my palms, with the fragile bones shifting as it squirmed for freedom.
It kicked and squealed, its pathetic heart hammering against my grip.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
“Shut up,” I hissed. My arms trembled with the urge to squeeze, to break something, anything, to feel the bones snap instead of my pride crumbling.
I flipped the creature over, using my thumb to crush its vocal cords, but not pushing hard enough to end the suffering.
“Shhhh,” I hushed, the mania creeping into my voice as I stroked its fur. “Fuuuck. You’re perfect like this. So desperate. So mine.”
I knew I was repeating Carrington’s words. Knew like an echo in my mind as I said them out loud. They belonged to him. But I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t convince myself to care.
My fingers pressed harder, feeling the limpness creep through the small animal. The adrenaline surged through my blood as the fade grew and the light dimmed from the black void of its eyes.
“Hey!”
The voice sliced through the dark, sharp enough to make me loosen my grip, and the damn rabbit that was nearly dead shot out of my hands, a streak of fur vanishing into the trees.
“Fucking hell.”
I turned, my eyes wild, my breathing coming in short, harsh bursts.
A woman, maybe a year younger than me, stood a few feet away.
Her jeans were ripped at the knees, and dust and dirt coated her clothing.
Her hair was messy from the maze, and a flashlight dangled uselessly in her hand.
The sharp, harsh light blinded me as she approached.
Her eyes moved from my shaking hands to my face, and she tilted her head.
“You looked like you were about to kill that poor rabbit,” she said, judgment lacing her tone with a hint of fear. “Were you?”
Yes, you buffoon, and now I’m going to try not to fucking kill you.
I didn’t answer. My throat was tight, my eyes burning from that fucking beaming light still in my face.
She took another slow step forward, then another. As if I were a weak fucking animal she wanted to nurture. The flashlight beam cut across her mouth, illuminating the curve of her soft smile.
“You shouldn’t hurt animals. That’s not okay. Are you lost? The maze is back that way, ya know.”
The light wavered on my face, highlighting the mask still placed there.
The mask…
“Clearly, you are an actor. Did you get tired of chasing people, so you ran after a bunny?”
The woods tilted underneath me. My anger and irritation at this bitch firing twenty questions at me was pounding my head in two.
I should’ve walked away. I should’ve given some bullshit response and played the innocent dumbass. I needed to open my mouth, gaslight her into submission, and walk the fuck away. Convince her I wasn’t exactly the monster she saw.
Instead, I closed the space between us, grabbing her wrist and shoving her back against the nearest thick, rough tree. The bark scraped as she squealed, just like the rabbit had.
“You don’t even know me,” I growled, my hand pressing into her hip, fingers bruising, no softness left in me to break through. “Who says I’m fucking lost, Baby Girl? Maybe I am out here waiting for a stupid girl like you to find me.”
“What do you want with me? I-I am not like the other girls. I don’t want s-sex with a stranger.” Her breath puffed on the chill of the air, ghosting against my mouth as I leaned against her frozen form. “I don’t want this. I-I was trying to help you. Just let me go.”
My jaw locked, and I hated how her dismissal made me hard as stone.
I kissed her like a fucking punishment, our teeth clashing, my tongue demanding. She whimpered beneath me, tears falling from her cheeks until she finally moaned, clutching my shirt—not dragging me closer, but not pushing me away.
Her thighs parted with the demand of my fingers, her pale, breakable skin marking beneath my grip when she resisted. I shredded her jeans and tore off her underwear. Her voice broke into a gasp that I swallowed with my mouth.
“Stop,” she breathed, breathless. “Please. Let me go. I don’t want this. Or you. I’m not like those g-girls.”
Her words made me harder, and her denial was like a frayed wire igniting me further. All I could hear as my fingers sank into her pussy were my own pleas and denial. My pathetic cries of pleasure and pain echoed in my mind on a loop.
I could hear it all.
I could feel her break, feel her resistance shatter…like mine had for him.
“Don’t lie to yourself, woman,” I muttered against her throat before biting down hard enough to break skin.
“You can say you don’t want this, but there’s nothing dry about this cunt that I am sinking my fingers so deeply into.
Think I could do that if you weren’t turned on by me taking you?
The truth is, you want this. You want me. ”
“No…” she shot back, nails raking down my back, trying to gain some power when she had none. “I don’t.”
Her attempts to gain some form of control made something inside me break loose.
My hips slammed against hers, and the tree groaned with the force.
Her breath hitched higher, her eyes widening when she looked down and saw me freeing my cock.
Her eyes reflected the fear I wanted, making my smile grow.
“No,” she gasped. “No. No No. Please. Don’t do this to me.”
I held her tighter against the tree, using my knee to push her thighs open further.
She was so wet she glistened in the moonlight.
The illumination on the ground from the flashlight bathed us in a light, making it impossible for either of us to hide.
I didn’t pace myself, didn’t soften my body as I slammed deep inside her.
I felt her fucking break. Felt the blood as her body ripped around me. And that feeling only encouraged me to thrust harder. My hips were sharp, a brutal rhythm of anger and desperation, anything to feel less powerless.
She clawed at me like the most pathetic animal that had ever met my grip, her voice cracking with moans that echoed through the trees.
Just like I was unable to in that fucking haunted house. She wasn’t able to deny me in these woods.
“How can you be so cruel?” she whimpered, voice ragged. “You don’t even know me…don’t you care at all?”
“Not tonight,” I snarled, slamming into her harder.
Her head hit the tree as she cried out, her tears soaking my chest and face. Her legs wrapped tight around me, while her ability to want it to stop wavered. “At least you know you’re a fucking monster.”
Her words only drove me faster. Harder, until all I heard was her broken pleas and moans mixing with the pounding of the blood in my ears.
I came inside her broken cunt, like a scream underwater.
Muted. Nothing like before.
I didn’t fucking feel anything, but his laughter echoed in my mind.
She slid down the tree, her legs shaky, sobs spilling between heavy breaths.
“I hate you,” she whispered, arms wrapping around herself to shield herself from my uninterested gaze. “I should’ve let you kill that rabbit. Someone’s going to make you pay one day. I hope they see the monster in you and toy with you the way you do others…and only then finally fucking kill you.”
I pulled back from the tree, my hands still trembling. Anger and shame bit through the shroud around me.
The woods were silent again.
She grabbed the broken pieces of her pants and took off running back toward the maze. I wasn’t worried about her snitching on me.
She didn’t know who I was. There were hundreds of the same smiley-masked men in these woods. She knew she’d never get any form of justice.
I growled, punching the tree bark, my knuckles splitting open.
“Fuck you,” I said to no one, but the echoing voice in my mind.
Carrington.
Carrington Fucking Harding.
That orgasm of letting go, finally breaking a damn bitch under my cock, no longer babying them and being the magical fuck they wanted, was nothing. Nothing compared to the orgasm that made me shake.
Nothing compared to how he made me come…
“Fuck!” I screamed, punching a tree until I watched blood drip down my knuckles, illuminated by the flashlight on the ground. “Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you.”
It was a chant. A spell I repeated on replay, trying to break through the shadow of my mind. I had to get a fucking grip. I had to walk back to the fucking mansion, look Xanthy in the face and maintain any shred of control I had left.
Will you still love me, Xanthy?
I parroted her silhouette in my mind, leaning lazily on the siding of the house.
Will you love me when I snap your brother’s fucking neck?