18. Ivy
Chapter eighteen
Ivy
Age Nineteen
My throat seems to forget how to work as the scream gets trapped there, stifled like the heat that was coursing through my blood moments earlier. I know I should run, but I can't get my feet to move... can't get any part of me to move. And when Killian's eyes cut to mine, they render me useless to do anything other than stare at him through the tears pooling in my eyes.
There's a splash as Tilly's body falls into the water, as he drops her without any concern for those now vacant eyes. She bobs on the surface, bleached blonde hair pillowing around her, the gaping wound in her throat pushing the last of the air out of her chest so that she teeters, dipping below the surface. Nausea swells inside me, burning in my empty stomach, but it gets trapped there, tamped down by something in the way Killian looks at me.
"You... killed her?"
Part of me thinks this can't be real— I'm having a fever dream in the basement, that they slipped me some kind of drug, that I'm just trying to contend with my hatred for them. It wars with the intrigue they pique inside of me.
"She touched what's mine." Killian smirks, sidling up to me and coaxing my chin into his fingers, as if I have the awareness to try and look away when his dark gaze has me pinned to this very moment by the fabric of my entire soul. I'm aware of his wet thumb stroking the line of my jaw, which I didn't realize I was clenching, but I don't know if it's water or blood that he's painting my skin with.
"What?" I try to shake my head to make some sense sink into the space between my ears, which seems to have shut down. Theo's hands on me keep me from moving, but I flick my eyes to Monty. "Why?"
"I already told you, Bambi," Killian chuckles, leaning into me so that his skin brushes against my naked chest, creating a static buzz between us that comes automatically, my body responding to him even in the madness of the moment. " She touched what's mine ."
As if to illustrate his point, his hand slips between us, fingers grazing against the space where blood is thrumming between my legs, waking to a call I don't understand.
"This pussy is mine. I thought you figured as much when I carved my name into the supple skin of your ass. But if you've forgotten, I will gladly remind you."
My breath hitches as fear tangles with desire and my feelings of guilt and disgust. I just watched him murder someone, and I did nothing to help her. Now I'm a witness to murder. Will he kill me next to silence me?
A hot tear slips down my cheek, but I don't dare move to wipe it away, hostage to his touch between my legs, his dark eyes paralyzing me. For a minute, I think he may crush his mouth to mine and devour me until he can lull me into a sense of security before drawing the blade across my neck, too. For a minute, I think he's going to throw himself at me and drown me here, the way he had Monty drown her on his cock. But he does none of those, his gorgeous face cracking with a grin that makes him look every bit of the predator that he is.
Someone favored Killian when he was being crafted in the depths of hell because he is exquisite and cunning, a trap that people will walk willingly into. I thought it was just me, but after watching Tilly with him, I know that I'm not the only one.
"You want to run, don't you, Bambi?" His hot breath tickles my lips when he laughs. "It would be a shame, wouldn't it, if you couldn't run this time?"
I work hard to swallow, his name on the tip of my tongue. "I won't tell anyone."
Monty chuckles behind him, and I turn to see him brandishing the knife that Killian abandoned, watching the blood drip off of it in the moonlight. "Of course you won't. Who would you tell?"
The fucking police, for starters.
"Ivy won't betray us," Theo whispers, pressing a kiss against my bare neck that makes me wilt more than it should. "Will you, Tiger Lily?"
"No." I whimper, the automatic response getting caught on a wave of pleasure as a hand grips my breast and his thumb coaxes my nipple into a stiff peak. I can taste the danger, thick in the air, sweet and toxic at the same time.
"How do we know that our little doll won't betray us?" Killian hums, his eyes sweeping mine in search of an answer to that question.
"Are you going to tell on us, Ivy?" Theo chuckles, his voice an echo from the past—a time when Monty swam behind me and pulled on the strings of my bikini top, letting the others get a glimpse of my small, budding breasts six summers ago.
I know the answer they want, and I know the answer that I should tell them. I also know the answer that I would say if I were a good person, and it's not the one that comes out of my mouth. "No."
I've never told on them. Not a single one of the fucked-up things they've done to me over the years. Pushing me around when we were kids, tricking me into picking a bouquet of poison ivy, telling me that I'm dumb and useless, and using me for a sick thrill. I took the heat for traipsing through the Fosters' yard when they sent me chasing after the dog that got into Theo's bag of weed, and I claimed it was mine when Mrs. Foster found the mutt nosing around in her garden, clearly disoriented. My parents footed the vet bill that they then punished me for by a hundred lashes with my dad's belt, given to me by Uncle Vitoli, who enjoyed the punishment a little too much. I kept their secret when they mutilated me, placing new scars over top of the ones they earned me before.
For reasons I don't even understand, I've let them torture me, and I've taken it because their brand of serrated hate feels so much better than my parents' general apathy for me. The pain they give me feels like a treat, and I don't know how to make sense of that other than that the look in their eyes when they do these things feels like it's mutual... symbiotic. It gives me something instead of just taking, like everyone else does.
"That's right, Bambi." Killian smirks, nodding like he's proud of my realization. "You won't tell on us, because who do you have to tell? You have no one but us."
Another hot tear drips down my cheek, but this time, Killian leans forward, pressing his tongue against my flesh and lapping it from my face. His hand twines in my hair, fisting it and pulling me against him until I feel his teeth on my skin.
"Who owns you, Bambi?"
"You." I whisper, my brain already trying to decide how to contend with that on top of everything else.
"Say my name." Killian coaxes, pressing his lips together over my cheekbone and kissing it so hard, I think I'll bruise.
"Killian." I whimper.
"Who else, Poison?" Monty's voice is low and husky, and when I turn to look at him, there's so much need in his eyes that I want to hold him against my chest, easing his pain and guilt like I did last year when he came to my room.
"Monty." I swallow, trying to tamp down the rest of the tears that are lining my throat, confusion and desperation that I won't let show.
"And me, Tiger Lily?" Theo's teeth nip at the shell of my ear.
"Yes, Theo." I let out a sigh, trying to ease some of the pressure inside of me that I can't even begin to understand.
"Good." Killian purrs, his lips softer as they trail down to my jaw. Monty moves in to my other side, pressing a soft kiss to my shoulder blade, and seconds later, Killian's mouth is on mine.
He steals every molecule of oxygen from my lungs, his depravity needing a greater source of sustenance than the rest of us. Gnashing lips and lashing tongues tangle as I give in to him and to them, needing this more than I've ever let myself realize.
It's like Killian breathes life into me, filling up spaces that started to decay long ago, ripping the tourniquet from limbs that feel like they've gone dead with disuse, forcing need into every space inside of me until I am dripping with it, shaking against Theo's touch as Killian ravages my neck and Monty trails gentle kisses along my spine.
They're animals, more beasts than men, and yet somehow, I am right there with them, hanging on their every touch like an addict in need of her next fix.
I can feel Killian stiffening against me, his cock growing with need again, and I want it. I want Monty's hands to twine against my scalp as he shoves me under the surface, taking away my need to breathe anything but them. I want Killian to impale me against him. I want Theo to suck a nipple into his mouth for them to do something to soothe the ache they put inside of me.
It’s wrong. It’s sick and twisted, fucking depraved. I just witnessed a murder. That should have dried up any need they awakened in me before it, but it didn’t. I’m so numb to everything but them that even knowing they’re killers doesn’t stop me from wanting them.
“Fuck me," I beg into Killian's mouth, rolling onto my toes to wrap myself around him, giving him access to me.
"Aren't you a virgin?" Monty whispers, his lips curved into something that feels like a smile.
"Does it matter?" I snap, the need bending me so far that I feel I may break. I don't understand where it came from. Or, maybe I know it's just been there all along. Maybe something just awakened a beast that's been lying dormant for all these years.
"If I fuck you, you won't be a virgin anymore." Theo chuckles.
"And then we wouldn't have anyone to sacrifice to the devil on the summer solstice." Monty tuts his tongue, and I stiffen, fear cementing in my spine.
My heart is a wild thing, galloping just under the thin skin of my chest, a prisoner in my ribcage. "Is that what this was?" I venture as Killian backs away to get a better view of me, smirking. "Was she a sacrifice?"
"You think Tilly was a virgin?" Theo sneers, spinning me around so that he can see my face; the impact of what I just witnessed is still clouding reality.
"You're precious, Bambi." Killian's lip twitches with amusement. "And awfully naive if you believe any of that."
I'm pretty sure Tilly wasn't a virgin, given how comfortable she'd been with coming onto me and taking Killian's cock like a porn star. But if it was some sort of sacrifice, at least it would make sense. I may be naive, but I've heard the rumors every summer about 'those boys'.
They're sick, wicked, and wrong .
"You really think we killed that bitch for some boogeyman to claim her in hell?" Theo claps his hands together, startling me so that I jump and knock into the hard wall of Killian's chest. I push off of him before his hands can wrap around my waist, turning to face them all at once.
On their own, each of them is other-worldly. It's no stretch of the imagination that they were put here to wreak havoc upon the world. Together, they create devastation.
"If not that, then why?"
Killian shrugs, one bronze shoulder glinting under the moonbeam. "What do you want to hear? That she was a whore? That she didn't deserve to live? Do you want something that's going to help you sleep at night when your pussy is weeping and your face is flooded with tears because you don't understand your sickness?"
His words make my stomach twist violently, and I hate that he's right about how hot I am for him, for them, in spite of what just happened... in spite of all of it. I am slippery and achy; the fire they stoked is still glowing in the embers.
"I just want the truth." I whisper, refusing to make eye contact lest he see that he just hit the nail on the head in his assessment of me, as easily as if he cut me open and began sifting through my mind.
"The truth is she was nobody. She was going to die tonight whether you were here or not," he rolls his neck and grins at Monty. "Though you being here sure as fuck made it a lot more interesting."
"I don't understand. What did she do to you?"
"You're really not getting this." Theo huffs a laugh. "Sweet, sweet, Ivy."
"She's a whore. I paid her three hundred dollars to fuck all of us tonight. When we saw you here, I offered her an extra two just to make you moan."
My head hurts, heavy with the things they aren't explicitly saying. "Why would you do that?"
“Because if it was one of us making you moan, Tiger Lily, you would have to crawl back up the mountain because we’d ruin you.”
Somehow, I have enough common sense not to tell them that I want them to ruin me.
Monty smirks like he knows what I’m thinking, though.
"And because it was fun." Killian rolls his eyes. "Until I got jealous and decided to kill her a little earlier than I'd planned. It's not that deep, Bambi. I just like blood, and I like games. You know that."
I do know both of those things. But what he just did was beyond all that. What he just did was...
"You kill people as a hobby?" I guess, catching Monty's eye as a laugh rolls through him.
"Not us." Theo chuckles. "We just help with the clean-up."
Something about that confession and the way that Monty passed the blade so seamlessly to Killian tells me that tonight wasn't the first time.
"You're murderers." I whisper, the word heavy and awkward on my lips.
" Killian's a murderer." Monty grins. "We're just... his wingmen."
His wingmen ?
My chest feels tight, disbelief making the world feel like it's closing in. What the fuck is wrong with me to have stayed here this long? What the fuck is wrong with me that I haven't tried to get away from them?
"Mmm." Killian nods. "That's what friends do, Bambi. So, tell me, are you a friend?"