49. Seth
Seth
“ADMIT YOU HAVE FEELINGS FOR HER.”
Citizen Soldier Playlist
“Hallelujah, I’m Not Dead”
“Weight of the World”
THREE DAYS LATER
Ican’t fix her. Can’t fucking fix her. All I can do is braid her hair.
And this.
I take out my anger like I normally do. Shirt off. Blistering icy wind pummeling my skin—slick with sweat. A good, solid axe in my hands. And the thick tree stump in front of me. The only light is the half moon above.
I swing the weapon, bringing it down in one solid split to the wood. My veins bulge in my forearms.
I don’t slow down. We will need everything for the winter. More than ever.
This is what I do. What I can do. What I always do.
Seth, the fix-it guy. Seth, fix the fence. Seth, repair the barn door. Seth, chop the wood. Stock the cabins.
My hands don’t shake, but my muscles flex under the weight of the task. Jolts of power surge through my arms, radiating into my chest.
Even that damn little skunk can help her more than me.
Pew Pew stays by her side all day, only rising when Vincent brings him food.
Sometimes, he whimpers into the crook of her arm.
Other times, he hisses and stomps his foot if we get too close.
Mostly Rory and me. He likes Vincent for the food.
And somewhere along the way, he got used to Jude.
Probably senses the Hippocratic Oath or some bullshit.
I swing again. New calluses form over the old. They mirror the thoughts in my head. Always overthinking shit. So, I become a machine.
“Three days and ye’re still out here playing lumberjack for the little luv.”
I look up to find Rory leaning against the woodpile like he doesn’t have a care in the goddamn world. Arms crossed. Smirking. He just came from his butcher shop. No blood-soaked apron, but there’s a smear on his cheek.
I grip the axe handle tighter. My jaw clenches so hard, I swear my molars might crack. “Shut the fuck up, Rory. I’m not in the mood.”
He keeps going. “I can get Jude out of the way so ye can give her some real wood. Maybe she’ll wake up.”
That’s it.
I lunge.
The world narrows to red and motion. He barely sidesteps, laughing like I’m a joke and wagging his fingers at me like some smug bastard preacher. He’s hankering for a fight. And I fucking know why.
“What’s next, Paul Bunyan? Carving her name into every tree till she wakes up?”
I snap.
Gripping the base of the axe, I swing it hard, the handle catching on his jaw. His head snaps back, and he howls in pain before locking his crazy eyes on me again. “Ye’re about to get devil-fucked, Sethy boy.”
“Before or after I bite off your other ear?”
He growls, but his eyes don’t lose that sociopathic glint. The kind that shows his temper with no mask—it promises war. He’s going to war with his own foster brother. Over her.
Because we both want her. We both need her.
Because she waltzed right onto our land with her purple hair and hazel eyes, curvy hips, and plump breasts. Because she threw down with Rory and took his blood just like she bit Jude. Because she swung my axe. And she stared into our psycho’s eyes and didn’t flinch.
She survived. And climbed right out of that goddamn pit like some beautiful bone witch resurrected from the dead.
She shines with her own fire like a punishing angel vowing feminine wrath. And she rained it down on three of us. So far.
He crouches on the other side of the woodpile, blowing me a kiss. “Ye’re so pussy-whipped, ye ready to build her a coffin.”
I see red. And it’s not his fucking hair.
I jump right over the woodpile and tackle him to the ground. We hit the dirt hard, fists flying, bruising and beating, bloodying each other. Clothes rip until we’re in nothing but our boxers.
Rory’s a fast fucker, and he’s cunning and violent.
But I’m stronger, and he fucking knows it.
My blood boils, probably hotter than his for a change.
He gets a solid blow to my ribs, then my jaw.
I slam him down, roll on top of him before he can open his goddamn mouth, and shove my axe handle right against his throat.
He chokes, kicking, hands flailing against my sides. But I don’t ease up.
“Admit it,” I snarl, pressing down harder on his chest. “Admit it, you sick, twisted son of a bitch. Admit you have feelings for her.”
“Go to hell, you tree-humping twat!” he rasps.
Growling, I grip the base of the axe, then his jaw, and plunge the handle into his mouth…as far as it can fucking go.
He gags. Spits. Chokes.
When I pull it out, he snarls, “Ye think choking me out makes your wood harder, you axe-wielding eejit?”
Both our boners are raging. So, it obviously has. It’s pathetic. Hilarious. Infuriating.
We’re all sweat, blood, and bare bones. Our breath saws in and out like rabid animals. Heartbeats thundering against one another’s. Blood’s in my mouth—his or mine, I don’t even care.
He wants to run that smartass mouth? Fine. One more insult, and this handle’s going somewhere even his big mouth can’t talk out of.
“Confess, you bleeding cunt,” I order, “and I won’t stick this where the sun don’t shine.”
His eyes blaze. He narrows them and eyes the handle, wet with his saliva. Some part of him fears I’ll do what I said, but his hot stubbornness overrules any common sense.
Jutting out his chin, neck muscles bulging, Rory hurls out, “Ye got an axe to grind with me, blue balls boy. But I’ll bet my butcher shed I can wake Snow White with my twelve-inch timber!”
I’m done. Fucking done.
Gripping the back of his hair near the nape of his neck with one hand, using all my leverage to roll him over, getting him in position.
Ripping down his boxers, I spread his cheeks, get the handle against his asshole, and shove it inside, stretching the ring so wide, he roars and screams like a banshee bitch.
“FUCKyouthickkissarsebleedingmaggOOOT!”
With the devil in my blood, I push it in more. Love watching him writhe like a beast under me, all his ass muscles struggling to get it out, his legs kicking behind me, wearing holes in the ground, flying up dirt.
“Had enough yet?”
He howls, “Yefeckingpatheticvag-sniffinbollox!”
I twist the handle evilly. Go in one more inch. God, his ass is strong. His hands are flailing like tree branches in a storm, leaving nail marks and bruises on my side. But I don’t let go of the back of his neck. I don’t remove the handle.
“Alright! Alright!” He slams his fist against the ground. “Sweet bloody Jesus balls! Get yer wood out of me!”
“Say it first.” I won’t let up. Lord knows if I do, he’ll just retract it. “You feel something for her. Admit it.”
“Fine! I care, alright? I give a shite. There. Write it in blood on your mother fucking axes.”
I still don’t let go. Rory coughs. And squeals.
“More.”
“You want me to fecking sob about it? Sing her lullabies? I think about her when she’s not around. I hear her hellish humming in my head all damn day.” His chest heaves, a muscle bouncing in his jaw. “She makes me feel things I didn’t sign up for, and it’s fecking annoying. Happy now?”
I pull. Love the shape of his ass ring around the handle as I do.
Rory rolls out from under me. I let him. He’s crouched, on his knees, glaring like a feral animal—his monster cock iron-hard and promising violence. “Felt safer when I was just trying to bang her. Now? Now it’s like there’s a damn hurricane under my ribs every time she so much as sighs.”
I press my lips into a smile and eye the handle with the brown smears on it. I don’t break the silence, the moment. Let him get it out for once in his miserable life.
Rory’s lip curls up in a silent, threatening snarl.
“You think I like this shit? I hate it. But I’d gut a man twice my size like I do my kills.
I’d make it last. Skin him, strip him, rip out his intestines—all that if it meant she’d open her eyes again.
So aye, congratulations, ye wrung it out of me, lumber-dick—Rory the sociopath’s got a goddamn heart.
” He snorts. “It’s a sick heart. Black as fuck.
But guess I got me a heart. Ye happy now, Dopey? ”
I grin. “Extremely, Grumpy.”
“Good, because I’m not done with ye.”
I get in position. He spits on my hole and digs himself in, rocking and riding me like a rodeo. Fuck, it hurts like hell. Especially with his King’s Crown piercings tearing into me, metal studs scraping my insides, dragging nerve endings raw with every brutal thrust.
“Take it, you lumberjackarse, you little sumbitch.”
He fucks like he’s furious—all muscle, all pain, ramming and grinding like a beast. I take it. I want it because I’m hard as my axe, and the hurt makes it real.
We won’t forget this night.
That ring of steel around his tip? It punishes, each stud catching flesh and dragging it out of place. Stretching my hole beyond compare. Up till now, it’s been slow. A steady slide with globs of lube. Never in all the way. I’ve only ever taken half his cock.
Now, he pounds into me like a jackhammer, then rolls us, still buried, still moving, still fucking destroying me from the inside.
Arrogance fills me, remembering how he couldn’t even handle one piercing without screaming. Not even with Jude and his expert hands applying them.
Jude’s got the full Jacob’s Ladder, magic cross, and a frenum for fucks sake. Reverse Prince Albert for me.
Pain’s a prayer. I’m a cathedral.
Rory grabs my hair, yanks me back, his hand strangling my shaft, fingers flexing over every embedded barbell like he’s trying to tear them out through the skin. I grunt, deep and guttural, every nerve blistering.
His teeth tear into my throat. Our mouths meet, mauling, biting, teeth clashing. I bleed into his mouth.
We don’t fuck to feel good.
We fuck to feel alive.