Chapter 9
Chapter
Nine
Low conversation drifts out of the family room as we approach. Christmas music plays quietly, underlaid by the crackle of the fire and the clink of ice. Louis’s mother laughs a practiced, charming laugh.
Anger sizzles in my chest. I was out in the cold at the mercy of a monster, dead for all they knew. And all the while, the family was sitting in here celebrating.
As Louis leads me into the room, the conversation goes quiet. I raise my eyes from the carpet to glance around at each of them. They all wear matching expressions of surprise—except for Louis’s father, who wears a sly smile.
His mother glances at the clock. “An hour already?” She’s not trying to hide her disappointment.
Louis’s fingers remain entwined with mine. “She received her punishment,” he says. “She passed the test.”
He’s standing by my side like I wished he would all day. Little does he know it’s too late.
His father lifts his glass in my direction. “Very good,” he says, his eyes locked with mine. “A glass of whiskey for our newest member of the family, then.”
As soon as it seems like I can get away with it, I excuse myself. I suppress the urge to pull away as Louis presses his lips to my cheek before I head to our room.
In the attached bathroom, I pick the sticks and leaves out of my hair and drag a comb through the wild waves. I wipe off my smeared eyeliner and reapply it. But when I stare at my reflection, I immediately tear up.
I’m a mess. This whole situation is just so fucked.
I jump at the creak of a floorboard behind me, and whirl around to see Louis standing in the doorway. He stares at me, eyes big and brown and puppylike.
“I’m so glad you’re okay, Diana,” he whispers.
Anger rises like bile in the back of my throat. For a moment, I’m struck by the desire to scream at him, to hit him, to pull his hair and sink my teeth into his skin. I want to see him hurt and scared, like he’s hurt and scared me today.
But I swallow the impulse back, along with all of my angry words. I need him to believe that everything is okay until I get an opportunity to really get my revenge.
“It’s—” I start to say, but then my voice breaks. My lower lip wobbles.
Louis steps closer and pulls me against him. I ball my hands into fists and cry into his chest.
“Shh,” he says. “It’s okay. Here, sit down.”
He settles me on the edge of the bathtub and grabs a washcloth.
He runs it under warm water and then kneels in front of me, gently using it to clean the grit off my knees from where I fell in the forest. I wince at the sting, and he murmurs sympathetically.
He brushes his lips over the scrape on my knee, massages my calf as he slides the washcloth over me.
Louis has always liked me best when I’m broken.
I’m not surprised when he tosses the washcloth behind me and settles between my legs again, pressing his mouth to the inside of my knee, and then my thigh.
His pale eyes flick up to meet mine, and I force my expression into the closest thing to fondness I can fake.
“I’m sorry,” he murmurs, breath ghosting against my skin.
He lays his cheek against my thigh, gazing up at me.
“I’m so sorry. This was the only way we could be together.
But… I knew you’d be clever enough to find a way through.
” He kisses the pale skin of my thigh again, his lips lingering, his breath warm.
“I knew nothing would happen, even if he caught you.”
My mind flashes to the scars on Anna’s back.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“You’re too gentle. Too good. What could he possibly punish you for?”
I bite back a laugh. Feign a grateful smile.
As I gaze down at the man I was willing to spend the rest of my life with, I realize he doesn’t know me at all.
Yet as he continues to murmur apologies and kiss his way up between my legs, I don’t push him away.
I lift my hips to help him slide my panties down, and open my thighs to welcome him between them again.
I fist my hand in his hair and pull him closer, pretending not to notice when he winces at my roughness.
I lean back, one ankle hooked around his back, and stare up at the bathroom ceiling as he shows me how sorry he is with his tongue. He’s more enthusiastic than usual. Maybe it’s because he truly wants to make it up to me. Or he just prefers me like this—helpless and pliable, at his mercy.
I wonder if it turned him on, imagining me running for my life through the snow. Begging on my knees in front of that monster.
As I shut my eyes, I imagine Louis in my place. Louis stumbling through the trees, falling to his knees. Pleading for his life in front of Krampus. Crying out as the birch rods crack against his back.
My breath quickens. I pull him tighter against me, legs shaking.
I imagine him sobbing, crawling, groveling in front of me. Imagine my fingers wrapped around a birch rod. Lifting it to strike him again…
I come hard with my fingers twisting in his hair and that image held firmly in my mind.
It’s good he doesn’t know me. It means he’ll never see my plan coming.