Chapter 3
BILLY
It’s easy to spill lies when my mouth is pressed to her pretty red lips, a natural tint to them like she’s spent her life kissing crimson roses.
The things that are to come are far worse than what we’ve already been through. And I don’t think Milus is going to take it easy on her.
Because of me.
My insubordination.
All of the girls I’ve killed.
Good girls really, but none of them a replacement for my Little Lamb.
No one could ever come close.
And as I watch her appear in the doorway between the sitting room and bedroom, me in the former, relaxed back in an armchair turned to face the bedroom door in wait.
Whiskey glass in hand, fingers curled overtop as the ice bleeds into the liquor, crystal base of it resting on my slack covered thigh.
And her, a tight, pale pink, floor length, silk gown moulded to her small curves.
Immaculately pulled across her splayed hips, thin spaghetti straps over her shoulders the only thing holding it up.
Long dark hair sitting like curled ribbons over her shoulders, revealing what I know to be a provocatively low scoop in the back. I know I was right.
Nellie bites the inside of her lower lip as I stare at her, my eyes roving from the circle of pink fabric touching the floor, hiding her feet, up the sculpting of her thighs, over the dip of her belly, lingering on the rapid rise and fall of her chest. To the puckering of her nipples, no bra beneath the delicate material to keep them hidden from my view.
And then, right there, the centrepiece of it all, is my locket.
The little gold heart pendant hanging low between her breasts.
It makes my teeth ache just looking at her.
Knowing that my blood is in that piece of jewellery, some of it inside of her too.
My hand itches with the slice through my palm, across the inside of my fingers, a wound that matches hers.
My tongue, too, throbs a little, thinking of that tiny torn piece of me inside of her belly, the piece of me she ripped away with her teeth and ingested.
Fuck, it only makes me want her more.
Love her more.
Penelope Hart is everything to me.
Her insides to her outsides, every drop of blood, strand of hair. And as I eye up that pretty little patch of skin on the left hand side of her chest, above her heart, below the protrusion of her collarbone, I know my number will look good there. Perfect.
Her jaw works minutely as she, too, stares back at me. Those deep, dark brown eyes ringed in black taking me in, my white button-up shirt, fitted black slacks, large gold watch, and shined shoes.
Neither one of us moves.
My fingers tighten over the rim of my glass.
“You look beautiful, Nellie,” I tell her finally, the huge room an echo of silence only interrupted by the deep timbre of my voice. “Come here,” I instruct her, fisting my free hand over the arm of the chair, fingertips biting into the steel-grey fabric.
Penelope doesn’t hesitate, gliding across the space and stopping just before my spread knees. Elegant, this murderous little creature moves like an innocent little fairy, she smiles like one too. Her right cheek dimples as her plump lips curl, but she’s shy, nervous.
You know I’m a liar, huh, baby girl?
“Sit,” I order, my eyes flicked up on hers, holding her gaze captive.
I’m going to have to share her attention tonight, and it makes me want to pout, to stab and slice and hack. But that’s how these things go.
I’ve never cared before, about the others standing over me just like this. Tears in their eyes, nothing but fear in their hearts. Because they knew I didn’t want them. Never could want them.
They weren’t right.
Didn’t fit.
Weren’t her.
Not my Penelope.
So I’ll do it because we have to, for survival, for love, but I’m not happy about it.
I want her to be only for me.
The Obsidian doesn’t work like that, though.
With their rituals and sacrifice.
That’s what this is, just another sacrifice.
When will I have bled enough?
Nellie slides onto my right thigh, side on to me, her left hand coming up to my face, curling over my cheek. I can’t take my eyes off of her. It feels too surreal. To finally have her here. In the space I created just for her.
“You look beautiful, too, Billy,” she says lowly, her eyes flicking to my mouth at the same time her thumb traces across my top lip.
“You always were so pretty,” she tells me, still stroking my mouth, staring at her thumb as it rolls over my lip.
“Your hair,” she sighs, pushing her slim fingers up the side of my face, into the knotting, upright curls.
“Your eyes,” she breathes, fisting her fingers in my roots and suddenly yanking my head back.
“But mostly,” she dips her face into mine, my throat arched, head tipped, and I let her do it as she hovers her fuckable lips over mine.
“It was your lying fucking mouth that I liked the most.”
My heart bangs in my chest, harder and harder, as my cock kicks in the confines of my slacks because, fuck, I love it when she gets like this. A little unhinged, a little bit scary, feral. Watching her soft smile transform into something dark and manic.
It’s beautiful.
She’s beautiful.
“All of those pretty little lies you told me when you were a boy,” she whispers, still grinning, still putting so much pressure on my trachea it feels like it might snap, and I could stop her if I wanted to, but I don’t. “You’re still fucking telling them.”
She releases my hair, throws herself out of my lap. I let her take one, two, three steps away from me, and then I’m leaping out of the chair, launching my half-full glass at the wall.
I don’t look as it shatters, liquid running down the wallpaper, glass splinters raining down with it, scattering over the hardwood.
She flinches, her head snapping to the side to see it, but I don’t take my eyes off the back of her head, her back to me, spine exposed in the low scoop of her dress, the fabric strangling her shape, as I collide with her.
Rushing her forwards until her body slams into the wall beside the open bedroom doors, my hand over the front of her face, cupping it in my palm, protecting her from impact.
But just as quickly as we hit the surface of the wall, my front plastering to her back, pinning her, both of our chests heaving with breath. All of the fight falls out of her.
I feel her deflate beneath the firmness of my body, and instinctively my forehead drops to the crown of her skull, my nose in her hair, roses and earth filling my nostrils, grounding me.
“I don’t want to fight with you,” I tell her in a rare moment of vulnerability, throat constricting with the lump forming in it. “I love you too much for this shit.”
That’s truth.
It isn’t another lie.
Not this time.
It doesn’t matter that we’ve spent so long apart, I feel it in my marrow.
She’s silent beneath me, trapped between my body and the wall, her breaths still hard as mine slow.
I can feel her heart hammering against my own, and it eases me, having her here.
Alive. Not a taunting head on a silver platter displayed to me as a punishment.
She’s here, in the flesh, breathing, heart beating, fighting.
I just need to keep it that way.
“Nells,” it’s relief, the way I breathe out her name, the feel of it on my tongue warming my blood as my cock kicks once more. “Nellie, baby.” Her hair stirs with the warmth of my breath, her body so very still beneath the crush of mine. “Novus is important.”
She scoffs, a light snort, her back bumping my chest with the huffed exhale of air from her throat, but I keep pinning her, I keep talking.
“You will see and hear things tonight that will disgust you,” I tell her honestly. “We will participate in rituals and practices that will curdle your insides and make your teeth clench, but we, you, will do them.”
Because we have no choice.
Because I want to keep you.
Because everyone in The Obsidian is going to try to take you from me.
“I need you to trust that I will forever keep you safe, Penelope.” One of my hands smooths down her side, over the shiny fabric of her dress, settling on the curve of her hip, my fingers splaying over her pelvis.
“You don’t show anything on your face, you don’t react, you don’t pull away from me.
You don’t object. You move when I move.” She is so still beneath me, pressed into the wall, it’s like she’s hardly here at all, her breathing slowed, her heart a soft drum.
“If I can’t keep you under control, Little Lamb, someone else will come along to try and prove that they can. ”
It’s a truth that doesn’t bear thinking about. Because that’s what it is. A truth. One I’ve seen. One I’ve witnessed. One I’ve participated in.
Women are as precious as they are disposable in The Obsidian and regardless of whether Nellie is mine or not, Paired or otherwise, she will never be safe if she shows rebellion.
“We are Two, Nellie, you and I.”
I’m still breathing in her scent, letting it calm my racing heart even as more blood floods to my aching cock. I’m insatiable, I will never be able to get enough of this girl.
“I just don’t understand,” she finally whispers in reply, breathy, slow, innocent. “I just want to be yours.”
My heart clenches with her confession, something I have wanted to hear all my life, of her free will. Not coerced, not forced, not ordered or demanded.
Free.
“You are mine,” it’s like thunder tears from my chest, my hand tightening on her hip, my other tight around her neck.
“You are mine and I am yours; I don’t ever want you to question that, okay?
” My forehead is still resting against her crown, her own against the wall now where my hand slipped down, closing around her neck. “Okay?”
“Yes, Billy,” breath oozes like sludge out of my lungs, everything inside of me tight and coiled, ready to spring.