Chapter 12 #2
There were angry red marks where I’d touched the rope. Sizzling like acid had eroded my skin. The ropes killed me to touch, and I could only imagine how bad it hurt her to be wrapped in them naked. Beautiful or not, she was in pain.
Pain looked peaceful. Her face was contorted like a porn actress’s, and the soft whimpers that left her mouth sounded the same, too.
Was pleasure pain too?
“Kid. Please. Before…he comes back.”
I furrowed my brow, trying to stick the knife under the rope without touching the soaked rope.
“Who?”
I didn’t want to hear her say it. I didn’t want to have to accept that this wasn’t a random coincidence, and my father really had done this to a woman.
“Edmund Anderson. He’s a monster. All those girls. He killed them all. Please. You have to…help me. I can’t be gutted like the others. Call nine-one-one. Please.”
Edmund Anderson. My best friend. My father. A monster?
When she whimpered and began wiggling, I pulled out my phone and dialed the numbers. I felt like a traitor. I had to get Dad to leave. He couldn’t be here when they came to get this lady.
“Emergency. What’s your location?”
The woman heard the dispatcher and started screaming like a banshee.
I dropped the knife and my phone, smashing my hands over my ears, trying to back away from her screams. She was fighting the rope, breaking free from the few bands I had cut, but her skin corroded as it brushed against them, leaving her looking like a melting wax figure.
I backed away, the intensity of the screams painful and terrifying. I wanted her to stop. She wasn’t beautiful anymore, just loud and broken…angry and desperate.
I didn’t see it coming. I was too distracted by the wailing female. It was too late. A bullet blew through my side, landing in the woman and exploding her like a balloon of noodles.
“Ah!” I screamed, the pain in my side as agonizing as the ringing in my head. My father was here. I could see that he was speaking to me, but the words were muffled, stunted by my loss of hearing and the blinding pain of my bleeding torso.
“Dad…Why?”
I was falling. His disappointed face hovered over me. The last thing I could see before it all went black.
“You are not the son I thought you were. How could you betray me, Shiloh? I am the only one who would have ever accepted you for who you are.”
“Shiloh?” Xanthy whispered in the dark, reaching for me and knocking me from my memories.
I didn’t answer, my skin clammy and my mind racing. I snuggled into the bed, letting my mouth find hers. The kiss was desperate and punishing. Like I needed to bury everything I couldn’t shake inside her warmth. She gasped into my mouth, then softened, her hands sliding up my shoulders.
“You’re wet,” she giggled softly. “What were you—”
“So are you,” I growled, climbing on top of her. My voice sounded foreign to me, scraped raw like that fucking shed. “Don’t talk, Xanthy.”
She didn’t argue.
She never did.
That’s why I came to her. She let me take what I needed. Always. She smothered the darkness and let me live in peace with her light.
Her body opened for me, trusting and welcoming. I got her ready, using my fingers and curling them just right. She deserved it. She took my brutality tonight when I had no softness to give. I needed to remind her I was hers.
I was.
I was not anyone else’s.
I was not his.
“Oh fuck, Shiloh, my parents are only a few rooms away. I can’t do this, oh my god. Mmm.”
I slipped in another finger, using my thumb to rub circles on her pulsing clit. “Guess they’re about to find out you’re not a good girl in the bedroom, Baby.”
She moaned, convulsing on my fingers, her squirt spilling onto the bedspread, and coating my hand. I couldn’t help but smile. It seemed that being a rebel seemed to turn her on. She was anything but a wild child.
That was her fucking brother, not Xanthy.
“Are you ready for my cock, Angel?” I licked her juices off my fingers and shoved them into her open mouth.
She nodded, and I didn’t wait. I slid inside effortlessly, calm and easy.
There was no bucking, no challenge from her.
For a moment, I found what I was searching for—the silence. The peaceful relief and warmth.
But then it popped, like a bubble bursting in my space.
Her moans broke against my ear, soft and perfect, but it didn’t sound like her anymore. It was warped, dragging me somewhere I was desperate not to visit.
It sounded like him.
Carrington Harding.
I froze mid-thrust, my heart feeling like it was stuttering to a shaky halt.
My eyes snapped open. It was Xanthy beneath me.
Her small, delicate hands were on my back, not thick gloved ones.
It was her soft lips that were parted, not the swollen looped piercings of his.
Her eyes were shining, but behind her beautiful face, behind her whimpering moans…
He was there.
No. No, not this. Not him.
“Shiloh,” she whispered again, sweet and pleading, her legs wrapping around my back and pulling my cock deeper inside her.
My body jolted, the words clawing at me. It was her voice, but my brain had twisted it, filled it in with his tone, his fucking growl. An echo in my mind from tonight when he had spoken those same syllables.
I shook my head, trying to shove the thoughts down. “You aren’t in control,” I muttered. My hips slammed harder, chasing reality, and damning the past. “I fucking own this cunt, you hear me? Let me hear you say it. Who owns this dripping pussy, Alexandra?”
She gasped, writhing with the pulls of her orgasms. “Yes, Baby. Oh, fuck yes. You. Always you. I belong to you, Shiloh Anderson.”
My cock throbbed in her cunt at her admission of ownership.
The control…but it was wrong.
Every thrust was blurred. Her curves were shifting into broad fucking muscle, her softness hardening into his resistance.
My hands weren’t gripping her hips anymore.
They were pinning down his thick, tattooed neck, taming the snake trapped beneath my fingers.
My body betrayed me like it always had with him.
“Oh fuck, yes. Take it, let me hear you scream for once fucker.”
I pounded into him beneath me. Every fucking nerve screamed with the fantasy I didn’t ask for or want.
I clenched my eyes shut, refusing to open them.
It’s her. It’s Xanthy. Alexandra Harding. Your girlfriend. Fucking. Focus.
But my mind kept playing tricks. His voice continued to overlap hers, his dangerous smirk curved over her mouth, and his defiance melted into moans and whimpers that didn’t exist.
I hated it. I hated him and how much he made me ache.
“Shiloh,” Xanthy whimpered, nails dragging down my spine. “Oh my god, you are wild for me. Yes, Baby Boy. Yes.”
But all I heard was him.
I fucked her harder, punishing myself, and punishing the ghost of him in my fucking head. My teeth found her soft, perfumed throat, but I was sinking them into Carrington’s skin, marking him, forcing him to feel me the way I felt him.
A snake needed a charmer, or they were dangerous even to themselves.
“Fuck! Oh fucking hell, yes. Take my come. Drown in it. You won’t fucking breathe without my goddamn permission. Oh fuck.”
The release came like an ambush of my senses. It was violent and unrelenting. I spilled my come inside her cunt with his face seared behind my eyes. My face smashed forward, and I groaned his name into the pillow, muffling it before it slipped out loud.
I rolled off, lying beside her, my chest heaving, my skin still slick with sweat that had nothing to do with exertion, and everything to do with the betrayal of my own damn mind.
She curled into me, all smiles and satiated sighs.
“You’re trembling,” she whispered, pressing her lips to my shoulder in a soft kiss. “That was…incredible, Baby Boy. Like wow. I’ll definitely avoid my family tomorrow.”
I didn’t answer her. My tongue felt heavy and fucking poisoned. I worried that if I said anything, it would not be what I intended.
She drifted off to sleep quickly, her breathing slowing against my chest, while my come leaked out onto my thighs. She slept peacefully, trusting me to hold her and keep her safe.
I couldn’t relax.
I was wide awake and staring at the fucking ceiling. My body still hummed with aftershocks from the mind-blowing orgasm, but my mind…my mind was a battlefield.
I hadn’t been with her tonight, not really. My cock had been inside her, but everything else, from my betraying fucking thoughts to my intense climax…it didn’t belong to her.
It belonged to him.
The bastard was in my head. His silence back in the showers wasn’t just silence.
It was a knife, driven straight into me, twisting deeper with every minute I kept replaying it.
He hadn’t even touched me. I should have been grateful that he kept his fucking hands to himself.
Hell, he hadn’t even looked at me, yet he still controlled every breath I took in those walls.
I hate him. God, I fucking hate him.
But the harder I tried to hold on to that hatred, the more it slipped and warped into something else. Something I couldn’t name without wanting to tear myself apart.
I was terrified that next time I wouldn’t fight the fantasy…I’d welcome it.
Beside me, Xanthy murmured in her sleep, while reaching blindly for me. I let her cling to my side. She deserved to think she’d saved me from whatever danger threatened us.
But I knew the truth. She hadn’t saved me. She couldn’t.
Because Carrington fucking Harding had me by the throat without even lifting a finger. If I didn’t want to drown in the goddamn storm he created, I had to escape this. Thankfully, I knew just the thing to keep me from being swept away.
Sorry, Care Bear, but as the captain, it’s about time you go down with your ship.