63. Briella
Briella
“I BECAME THE THING THEY COULD FEAR MORE THAN MONSTERS. THE MEMORY.”
Citizen Soldier Playlist
(For Rory)
“Madhouse”
“Never Good Enough”
(For Raphael)
“Face to Face” - Citizen Soldier
“First Blood” - Citizen Soldier
Ilove their histories.
All the pieces of the puzzle are coming together. Rory’s should be fairly simple, I imagine.
Rory kisses Seth like the lumberjack is his air supply. It’s desperate, rough, devouring. I laugh, limping across the room with my cane, my bones still sore from earlier chaos, my legs wobbling as if I’ve just walked off a ship.
I plop down onto Rory’s lap with zero grace, and he immediately grabs a greedy handful of my ass like it belongs to him. His hands are always hot. Always firm. Always right there.
“Mmm. Merry Christmas to me,” he mutters, lips ghosting along my neck.
I run my fingers through his thick red hair. Always want to sink my claws into that copper fire.
But the second I do it, his jaw tightens, and a muscle pulses like a warning under his freckled skin.
“Careful, Lass,” he warns. “Do that too much, and I won’t be able to control myself.”
I shift just enough to pull back and ask, “So…were you born in Scotland?”
“Aye,” he says, like it’s both a curse and a prayer.
“Highlands. My Mam and Gran were Scottish. But my Da was Irish. He fell in love and left Ireland for her. But then they emigrated when I was still a wee lad. I barely remember it. Big family. I was the second youngest. Always in trouble. Always angry. Didn’t matter what the rules were—I broke ‘em.”
He pauses. His fingers twitch against my hip. Then, he meets my eyes.
“Was clear early on that I wasn’t wired like the others. No official diagnosis. Just whispers. Their unofficial diagnosis was antisocial personality disorder. Just another way of saying. I’m a sociopath who can smile while slicing yer throat.”
“Sounds like my Red.” I play with his shirt’s unbuttoned collar, daring to trespass on those ruddy curls on his chest.
He flexes, then chuckles dryly. “Loved bullying my brothers. Got kicked out of school for locking a girl in a supply closet. Stole knives. Slashed tires. Picked fights with kids twice my size just to see if I could win. And fire. Fire was my favorite.”
I still.
“Started with matches. Candles. Newspapers. But one night, I got bold. Set a corner of the house alight. Didn’t mean to burn the whole damn thing. I panicked. Tried to stop it. But the flames moved too fast. The kids made it out. Even Nanna. But Mam and Da didn’t.”
He looks away, jaw hardening again, and it’s the first time I see something almost like shame.
“I don’t feel guilt the way Jude or Seth might. But I felt rage. At myself. At the world. I used to burn myself with cigarettes. Never told anyone. Nanna wasn’t the same after. Too much grief. Too many mouths. One night, she took too many pills and never woke up.”
My chest aches for him, for all those kids, for the crazy kid inside him.
“We were all split up. Different foster homes. They sent me to one where the director worked on ‘troubled’ kids. Bastard made a career outta collecting us like we were broken toys.”
Silence stretches between us. His hand curls around the curve of my waist like he’s anchoring himself.
“So now ye know it all.” Rory sounds almost tired now. “And why the only fire Raphael lets me near is the one in the kitchen.”
Vincent, leaning nearby, deadpans, “It’s also the only reason we keep him around. That and the shepherd’s pie.”
The mood cracks, just a little, and I smile. I lean in close, pressing my mouth to the ear I once bit the lobe off. I lick the jagged edge slowly, just to make him twitch.
He gets harder instantly.
“One other fire, Red,” I whisper. “The one only I can light.”
He licks his lips. His hand grabs my ass again like he needs to prove he still owns it. “Does that mean it’s playtime yet?”
I bite his jaw. “Almost.”
And the way his gaze ignites, like a match flaring to life—yeah. Almost is going to kill him. And I love that.
“Seth?” I turn.
He shrugs. “Mine’s pretty basic. Only child.
Spoiled. Extremely happy. Nice family. Nice kid.
” He stretches his arms above his head, cracks his knuckles, and continues, “And then the car accident. Felt like something died inside me. But weirdly enough, it made me harder and nicer at the same time. Determined to put some good into the world. Couldn’t fix my shitty life, but I started fixing whatever I could in that place.
It’s why the Director took a shine to me.
And other than Rory, no one touched me.”
“Playtime?” Rory’s voice deepens.
I laugh softly. “Soon.” Bracing myself, I turn to Raphael.
I shouldn’t be surprised his finger is already crooked in a demand. He knew what I planned. He knows what I want, what I need.
Just as I pick up the cane, Raphael shakes his head. “Crawl, he commands.
Seth takes the cane for me, and I do. I get down on my hands and knees and crawl for him. If it were Rory, if it were any of them, I’d be doing it “tiger” style with a sexy, sultry gaze, licking my lips. But not Raphael. I just stare at him like I’m going wild in a soul-to-soul showdown.
Once I get to his side, Raphael spreads his legs, unzips, takes out his already stiff length, and rubs the crown on my lips. My pulse shudders. If there were ever a war for beautiful erections, Raphael would win. Hands down. Rigid, thick, the prominent vein throbbing with healthy blood.
“No teeth,” he growls the warning.
I softly part my lips.
With blood in his eyes, on the border of being unhinged, Raphael seizes my hair with a brutal grip, a sharp thrust of his hips, and he slams his hardness all the way to the back of my throat.
My jaw howls at how quickly I widen my mouth.
He’s all dominance and destruction, fucking my throat as I give him what he needs.
He is all predator. And I am his prey. And even prey can have power.
“Fuck, Briella,” he says, a strangled sound leaving his throat.
Then, he’s strangling me. His hand closes around my throat like he wants to see how far he can go—rocking his hips, pumping into me.
I am his vice. He is my addiction. The power of my soul. And I am his weakness.
I cling to his pants, holding on like he is my life. Because he holds my life in his hands.
Just when I think I’m about to pass out like the last time, Raphael pulls out, letting me gasp for air.
“I was born in blood,” he speaks with a detached tone.
I rivet all my attention on him, swept away by his violent beauty. The strands falling down his cheeks. Those hypnotizing green orbs. The chiseled jaw. God, he’s a work of art. When his powerful thighs flex again, I open my mouth and close my lids, preparing for him to ram me again.
“Eyes on me, my Queen.”
With tears blurring my vision, I obey. The moment I do, he shoves back in, but this time, it’s not a destroying piston. It’s strong, but something in how he rocks his hips in a steady rhythm…it’s intimate. I swallow him down.
“I don’t know much about my past. God. Fuck!” A gust of air leaves his throat from how I just swirled my tongue on the underside of him. He releases my hair. Touches his thumb to my tears. “Just the murder/suicide. I will never know the reason. My parents took that secret to the grave.”
His history feels like a powerful hand gripping my heart, squeezing just like he does again, fisting my lungs.
I slowly inch my fingers up until I cup his balls.
He jerks in my throat, tips his head back for a moment before looking back down at me.
These moments, these fragments of power, are what I hold onto.
Full of purpose, I softly stroke his balls and don’t stop licking every inch that my tongue can reach.
“I was bounced around from foster home to foster home. I owned each one. Bio kids unable to manipulate me. Isolated from any other foster children. And I was very good at manipulating others. Except for one. Ironically, he was a priest. He was the one who taught me archery, taught me how to hunt to sate my urges. I guess you could say he gave me my moral compass, though it’s never quite pointed north. ”
Chuffing a laugh, he unclenches his hand and pulls out, giving me air again. The most intense form of breath play I’ve ever had.
I may be his prey, but right now? He feels like my slave. The slave of my soul.
“What happened to him?” I wonder.
I’m still crying but not breaking down. He touches the side of my face, possibly the most tender I’ve ever felt from him.
“Sometimes, Briella…sometimes, I invited trouble. Not like Rory. But I’d taunt other monsters. One came after me, and Father Luke…got caught in the crossfire. Took a bullet for me. As he died, he begged me to only kill when necessary. And never an innocent.”
He rubs a thumb on my swollen lower lip, and I murmur, “Interesting for a priest.”
“He was eccentric. I’ll share more about him sometime.
But you know the history between us, you and me.
What you don’t know is how I had fucking enough after two years.
Enough torture. Enough abuse. Enough of biding my time while watching other children punished with ice baths, sleeping outside in the cold, or locked in the basement where he fucked me, made me bleed, made me sit in my own goddamn filth. ”
My heart screams for him. It weeps, knowing it all started with me. He took the trauma for me.
One press, and I open wide right before he hammers my throat, letting the monster out. But I’ve never seen him more controlled. I work to open my throat as he thrusts, hand necklace, giving me air, and rinse repeat.