Chapter 27 #2
Her hands go to my hair, grabbing on tight, her hips rocking up to meet my lips and my tongue as I ravage her, and I know that deep down, she’s no different than I am.
That she enjoys sinking into the mire, to the depths of our savagery, our primal instincts taking over until we’re just animals fucking because we don’t know what else there is.
She is my equal.
We are one and the same.
“Don’t stop,” she cries out, her back bowing against the hay, and I nip her clit between my teeth until she bucks and squirms, panting for breath, moaning, and I feel as if I’m the one submitting here, submitting to this dark desire that has me in a choke hold.
I eat her out, wet and messy, swallowing down her blood and arousal, and then she tenses, and I can feel her teetering at the edge before she goes over, letting out a string of expletives that make me smile against her.
She comes hard and loud, her thighs shaking and squeezing the sides of my head, her body convulsing beneath me, and I’ve never seen such a raw and primitive sight before.
She’s so fucking beautiful.
And I am so fucking hard.
“Oh God,” she whimpers as I pull back. “If there was any innocence left in me…”
“There’s no innocence left in you, Kat,” I rasp, pulling down my trousers and taking out my cock as I cover her with my body, one hand holding her hands pinned over her head. “I made sure to wring out every last bit.”
She stares up at me with wild eyes, hungry eyes.
“You like that, don’t you?” I grind out, as she raises her hips, and I position the head of my cock at her cunt, my teeth gritting as I hold myself back. “You like that you’re filthy, deviant, unclean. A heathen like me.”
She swallows hard, nodding, moving her hips again, my crown just stroking her now.
“You like it when I call you a whore, when I think of you as bad, as dirty? You’ll get no praise from me, little slut.”
Her expression turns molten, a hint of a smile on her lips that makes her look like she’s happily sinning.
“You talk too much,” she says.
My eyes go wide with surprise before I release her hands and let out a low growl, shoving the full length of my cock into her in a brutal, savage manner.
She cries out, sounding like she’s choking, her fingernails digging into my shoulders, then my back, but I give no quarter.
I pump mercilessly into her, rutting her hard into the hay, and she meets me on every bruising thrust with the raise of her hips.
I could get carried away, I could come right here, and it would be over in an instant.
But I don’t want that. I don’t want to burn through this.
The reason I brought Kat here wasn’t just so I could relive what happened four years ago.
It was so that we could come full circle.
Because I don’t know what the future holds for me anymore.
But I fear this might be the only chance I’ll get to be with her like this.
I take in a deep breath and slow down, my muscles shaking.
“I did a bad thing four years ago,” I tell her, angling my hips to push into her even farther, my eyes fluttering closed for a moment.
“At the time I thought the bad thing was what I had done with Pastor Ross.” I bring my mouth to her neck, kissing her, breathing her in.
“I thought that was the biggest sin, so big that I was forced to leave town. But even though I came here that night thinking that I had done something awful, the worst thing was yet to follow.”
I slowly drag my cock out of her and lift my head, my hands going to either side of her face as she stares up at me with a mix of lust and wonder. “The worst thing I did was take your virginity and leave you. I shouldn’t have done either. And for that, I am deeply sorry.”
My hips roll back into her, my cock thrusting in to the hilt, and I groan as a breathless sound escapes from her lips.
“I don’t regret losing it to you,” she whispers, her neck arching. “I only wish you had stayed and told me the truth. But you will always be the man who first claimed me. That will never be taken away, Brom. It will always be you.”
Her words do something to me, like there’s a loose thread that’s finally pulled, finally unraveling the binds around me.
And I decide I can’t waste time at all.
I start fucking her faster, each thrust going deeper and deeper, and suddenly I’m fantasizing that Crane is here too.
I want to come inside her and watch my seed trickle out of her legs, mixing with the blood, and then I want Crane to shove me aside and do the same.
I want to see him fucking her just like this, coming hard so that our semen is mixing together inside the same woman.
Our woman.
When I’m gone, it’s Crane who will have to take care of her in my place.
She belongs to him as equally as she belongs to me.
“I’m coming,” I grunt, my eyes pinching shut. I slip my hand between her legs, rubbing her clit until she’s coming too, and the two of us fill the barn with our rapturous noise, our shaking breath, our shuddering bodies.
I empty into her, filling her with my seed, wishing that someday I could give her a baby for real, that I could become a father, that I would have that life with her that I was once promised.
She doesn’t owe it to me, to marry me, to carry my children, but I still dream of it just the same, born out of love and lust, and not something outside our control.
Though perhaps love is always outside our control.
When I’m finally done, I stay inside her.
I don’t pull out. I lie against her, careful not to crush her completely, and I stare at her face, taking in every detail.
I see our youth and our history together: the smattering of faint freckles on her nose, what I used to call pollen dust, the faint scar on her chin that she got when we were trying to cross the creek and she slipped on a wet rock.
The distinctive shape of her lips, the very lips I used to fantasize about kissing when we were merely the best of friends, and all of this was nothing more than a dream.
“I love you,” I tell her, and even though I’ve told her before, it burns inside me, a furnace that can’t be caged. “Don’t you ever forget that, Kat. I love you and I always have. I always will.”
I watch as her eyes grow wet, and she reaches up to touch my cheek.
“I love you too, Brom,” she whispers, giving me a mournful smile as her words pierce my heart. “I always have and I always will.”
Something inside me breaks. That thread doesn’t just come loose, it snaps.
And I can’t help the tears that spill from my eyes and onto her cheeks.
“Daffy,” I murmur, shaking with emotion, and I kiss the tears off her, hers and mine. “Please know, please know that no matter what happens, no matter what happens to me, I am choosing you. I am choosing this. Us.”
“Nothing is going to happen to you, Brom,” she says. “I promise. We’re going to help you. Crane and I. We have the full moon ritual coming up, and it will work. It will work. You can’t give up hope yet. We won’t let you.”
But I haven’t given up hope. I know the day is coming soon when I’ll have to make a choice, a sacrifice, in order to save them. I also know if I voice this to her, she and Crane will do everything they can to stop me.
So I keep that inside.
“You know Crane really loves you,” she says after a moment, her fingers trailing over my drying tears.
The smile on my face is instant. “I know.”
“Do you love him?”
“I do.”
“You should let him know.”
“I have.”
She bursts into a grin. “He knows? Oh, thank goodness. I know Crane is Crane, and he doesn’t really seem to show his emotions, he just states them, but I can see how much he loves you and that all he’s wanted is for you to love him.”
“What about you?” I ask. “He loves you. Do you love him?”
She rubs her lips together. “I think so.”
“Kat,” I warn her. “I know you do. And you haven’t told him.”
She shakes her head. “No. I think I’m afraid to.”
“Why?” I frown.
“Because then he’ll ask me to marry him.”
I stiffen at that, a stab of jealousy between my ribs.
“And you don’t want that…,” I say carefully.
She licks her lips. “Actually,” she says. “I do want that.”
I close my eyes in pain and she presses her palm to my cheek. “And I want that from you too. I want you both. And I don’t know how I can have you both. If Crane asks me to marry him, I will say yes.”
“And if I ask you first?” I open my eyes.
She stares at me and exhales.
“You’ll have to say no,” I answer my own question.
“You know why, Brom,” she says imploringly.
Because of the horseman, the coven, the bargain.
“I know why,” I tell her.
And it doesn’t matter in the end anyway.
She belongs to us both, but in the end, there will only be Crane.
“Oh, look,” Kat says, gazing past me at the roof.
I glance over my shoulder to see a swarm of blue and black butterflies flying just above the hole in the barn and watch as they slowly start to fly down inside toward us.
To my surprise they start landing on Kat’s limbs, her hair, her face, then they do the same to me. She laughs, pure joy, and I join in too.
I make a promise to myself to never forget this.
—
We took a little more time in the barn then we should have, so once we got on our horses, we galloped the rest of the way back to the school.
It was a freeing sort of ride, cool wind in my hair, the scent of fresh earth and bonfires and fallen leaves, the thunder of Daredevil’s hooves underneath me, trying to beat the setting sun.
But I wasn’t worried for a moment. With each day I am learning how to barter with the horseman more and more. Kat would be safe after sundown. Crane would be too. The horseman knows how important they are to me. He knows they are off-limits.
I drop Kat off at her dorm room, and then I hurry over through the mist to Crane’s. At this point I don’t care if anyone finds it suspicious how I head into the faculty dorm every night, then again, I feel everything about the school is in a slow collapse. Perhaps we’re the least of its problems.
I get to his floor and Crane opens his door, stares at me in horror. “What happened?”
I frown and walk in his room. “Nothing. Sorry if I’m a few minutes late.”
“No,” he says, slamming the door shut and then grabbing me by the neck. “You have blood on your face.” His eyes drift down. “On your clothes too. What did you do?” he growls, squeezing my neck tighter.
I have to try and think.
Oh.
Then I grin at him. “Nothing for you to worry about, Crane.”
“Nothing for me to worry about? Whose blood is that?”
I’m smirking now. “Whose do you think?”
He narrows his eyes at me, and then it dawns on him.
“Fuck you,” he snarls, pushing me over. “Can’t keep your damn dick in your pants, can you?”
“You should talk.”
“You know how dangerous this is,” he snaps.
“This has nothing to do with some sacrifice or me knocking her up on behalf of a demon. You just don’t want me inside her when you’re not around.”
“And so what of it?” he asks, throwing his arms out. “I told you I’d remain jealous and possessive through it all. The fact that you got to fuck her, lick her bloody cunt when she’s at her most primal and powerful, yes, I’m damn jealous that it wasn’t me.”
I walk over to him and put my hands on his shoulders. “You want to kiss me now? You can probably still taste the blood.”
“Fuck off,” he sneers. But then that indignation in his eyes burns away to lust, just like I knew it would.
His eyes fall closed, and he leans in and captures my mouth in his, moaning slightly as his tongue licks the rim of my lips, slips past my tongue, and my toes are already bunching up in my boots.
Before we can get too carried away, he breaks the kiss and pulls back.
“I’m mad at you,” he scowls.
But I know he can never stay mad for long.