Lovesick (Raven Ridge Hallow #2)

Chapter 1

PENELOPE

I’m going to die here.

It’s as natural a thought to me as breathing, but it hits me so suddenly it feels as though the air is knocked from my lungs.

That’s all, it feels, I can currently do, try to breathe.

Barely twenty-four hours ago, the bright-eyed boy from my past swept his way back into my life with blood on his skin and violence in his heart, and he took me on an adventure, the destination unknown.

Rituals, bonding, fucking.

Everything dark and passionate and new.

Raw.

Fear is this living, breathing thing in the centre of my heart, tearing and fighting and clawing to make its way out.

But Billy Blackwell was once my light in the dark, my protector.

I trust him.

My monster.

Yet, now that I am one myself, all I feel for him is a decaying sort of love.

Something that is going to rot my bones and break my heart, hammer its way down the boned discs in my spine, and fuck my soul until it’s withered and black.

But I am here anyway.

Even knowing all that, I am still fucking here, because I’m devoted to him.

My dark, menacing god.

Billy Blackwell has me lovesick, an infection, a disease, a curse.

And despite my fear, I wouldn’t want it any other way.

The palm of my hand stings, the cut from the dagger to join me to him burns, and I’m sure his must too.

Only one of many things, I'm sure, he'll want me to do, to join us. I think of the blood, the flesh, the piece of sacrifice that I consumed. I think of Billy’s hand closing over my mouth, his fingers pinching my nose, forcing me to swallow.

I would do anything for you, Billy Blackwell.

My lungs work too hard, too fast, and the beat of my heart is a rapid thrumming inside the echo of my own ears. My entire body pulses with physical rebellion with every mile closer we get to The Manor.

That’s what Billy’s been calling it.

His home, which is now also my home.

The place we’ll live together, with his family, three brothers, one older, two younger. His father.

All people in his life I know nothing about. I have not asked, have not questioned, have not dared even wonder inside the safety of my own skull on the short three hour flight we took here from Italy.

From my home.

One I had to evacuate anyway due to the things I had done there.

So many lies.

So much blood.

The razorblade presses against the top of my ribcage, the blade a comforting pressure against the curve of my right breast. The sharp, warmed metal firm and threatening against the softness of my flesh.

I feel better with it tucked inside the band of my bra.

Even beneath my layers of clothing, it makes me feel safer.

Even if safety is nothing more than an illusion.

“What are you thinking about, Little Lamb?” Billy asks almost softly, as though not to frighten, like a spook in the dark, hiding inside the dense shadows.

So many things, Billy.

My fingers tighten in his automatically at my silence, our hands intertwined, woven like an intricate webbing that holds us together across the back seat.

He has already lain me across it, the air conditioned cooled iciness of leather biting at the warm, bare skin of my back, pricking goosebumps up across my flesh as his mouth worked its way down my neck.

His big hands caressed my calves, smoothing up beneath the skirt of my dress, until he was burying his face between my thighs, sucking on my clit and making me see stars before punching his cock into me to fill me with his cum.

I can feel it there now, the sticky residue of our quick encounter. Something Billy did not shy away from even at thirty-thousand feet in the air.

Insatiable.

Both him and I.

Scarily, it feels as if he never left.

Another danger I’m facing.

Falling into him harder than Alice fell into Wonderland.

It’s disorientating, frightening, and something I am desperately clinging to.

He is all I’ve ever wanted.

Every part of my rotten insides is pulled towards his like coffin flies to a corpse.

Survival.

Maggots festering inside a sickly wound, oozing and bleeding, seeping fluid and shedding dead flesh.

That’s what our love is.

The closer we get to our final destination, such a short amount of time since he reappeared back in my life, there is a looming black veil of dread that dares to fall over me, threatening to tighten and suffocate.

Early evening rain bleeds down the windowpane I’m resting the side of my head against, tracking down the glass like tears on a sculpture. An angel, with a heart made of stone, wings frozen in time, concrete encasing them.

Trapped.

Weighted.

I already feel it.

Barbed wiring wrapping around the pumping organ in my chest.

Strangling, strangling, strangling.

Billy Blackwell is not a man to lie to, but I find myself doing it anyway.

“Nothing,” I reply, breath fogging the window, the AC on high inside the long town car we’re seated in the back of.

His scent floods my nostrils, earthy musk, sharp grapefruit, overwhelming me to the brink of insanity as it infects me.

I am violently ill for this man.

For the boy I remember.

The one who kept me safe and wiped my tears. Protected me until he was gone.

Little girls are never safe in this world, but I was safe with him.

Never from him, though.

But from everyone else.

It was just us two.

Even as children he scared the whole entire world and all of its inhabitants away from me. Shielded me like the weak little creature he so calls me.

Little Lamb.

Billy’s long fingers are gentle as they coax my face towards his.

Sky blue eyes pierce mine, bright like the devil’s in the gloom of the car, daggering me in place like railroad spikes through my limbs.

His fingers stroke along the curve of my jaw, his thumb hooking beneath the tip of my chin.

He moves into the space between us, sliding towards me across the leather bench seat, placing our joined hands in his lap.

Billy moves my face away from the condensation-slicked glass, repositioning my entire body like I’m nothing more than a doll, a puppet for him to play with.

Moving my legs so they’re angled towards him, tilting my face so we’re barely an inch apart, his breath whispering across my mouth.

I sink into it, the feeling, the ease of letting him take charge. So natural to me, as though for the first time in twelve years, I can finally relax. It has goosebumps rippling across my flesh, a chill slipping down my spine like needles pricking between each boned disc.

“Tell me what you’re thinking, Nellie,” Billy tempts seductively, his mouth this indulgent half-smirk that lights my insides on fire, a spark of excitement igniting my blood like gasoline.

His tongue flicks across my cupid’s bow, “Let me inside of your head the same way you let me inside of your…” His smirk transforms into a villainous grin as he trails off, his gaze dropping to the slight parting of my knees.

His hand resting atop my femur runs smoothly up the inside of my leg, teasing me as his fingers head north towards the axe wound he carved into my upper thigh.

“Heart,” he finally says, a light, huffed chuckle escapes him as he flicks those piercing pale eyes from the apex of my thighs up to my mouth, before finally meeting my gaze. “Tell me everything you’re thinking, Little Lamb.”

His mouth brushes mine and I find myself chasing him as he immediately draws back, wanting to kiss him, wanting him to drag me closer. His grin dissolves into something softer, but it’s gone too quickly for me to study.

“Every sick, twisted, little desire you have in there,” he finishes, brushing the tip of my nose with his own.

I blink, our mouths finding each other, his upper lip plumper than his lower, drags across my mouth, finding the corner seam of my lips to nibble and pluck at.

“Billy,” I breathe, my eyelids heavy, my lips parted, breath stuttering as a full body shudder rolls through me.

“Mmm, Little Lamb,” Billy huffs a laugh as he says it, not mockingly, more like disbelief, that I’m here, that we’re together, but then, perhaps it’s not that at all.

Shaking his head, his dark brown, upright curls springing with the movement of his neck, he catches my bottom lip between his teeth, sucking it into his mouth as his fingers find the wound on my leg. His short nails stab into the parted flesh at the same time his teeth tear into my lip.

Eyes popping wide, I suck in a sharp breath. My back arches, the crown of my skull smacking into the window as I squirm, trying to get his teeth out of my lip, his hand off of my thigh. To escape.

The taste of iron tinges my taste buds as his teeth sink deeper and my hands fly up, slamming into the front of his shoulders. My hips jerk, and I buck, lifting a foot to kick at him, attempting to shove him back.

Billy’s fingers drive into the parted flesh of my wound, and I can feel it. The blood. The injury he put so much attention into caring for on the plane, he’s now tearing into like he’s trying to peel my flesh from the bone, picking and digging at it.

My foot slams into his hip, my toes twisted enough to hit him in his lower abs, I kick him as he continues to bite my lip and tear at my thigh.

But then his bloodied fingers drag away, his teeth retract, and he’s sucking on my tongue, pushing his own into my mouth with a deep groan I can feel vibrating along my own vocal cords, just as his fingers part my slick folds and he buries the messy digits inside of me.