Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
ROMAN
Iwatch as she runs deeper into the night, moving further and further away from us with every second that ticks by.
No amount of distance will ever be enough to keep us from claiming her.
There is no escape, not from us, but we give her a head start anyway.
We watch as her pink hair, which was tied up in pigtails, comes loose with each stride, falling across her back in thick, tangled moonlit waves.
I spent years imagining what it would feel like to run my fingers through it, making every part of her mine in every way, and tonight is the closest I've ever come to it actually happening.
She thought I hadn’t noticed the way she melted against my touch. The way her body answered mine, betraying everything her honey-colored eyes tried to deny, and that’s all the fuel I need to go through with this.
My Harlequin.
My stepsister.
The only woman I’d die for, and the reason I just might.
My soul was always built to burn at her feet, and I’d throw myself into her fire over and over again without a hint of hesitation if she asked me to. Of course, she knows none of this, and that’s how I intend to keep it.
The woman is a damn distraction.
A liability.
If The Order ever found out about this, if they ever knew the depraved fucking things we plan to do to her, it wouldn't just be us that they’d come for.
They'd come for her, too, which is why tonight is the only night this can happen. The only night where we’re free to pretend to be someone else, and finally claim what has always been ours.
“... One,” Jace says before we take off into the thicket of trees, chasing after the only woman who’s ever made any sense to us.
The adrenaline mixed with the sweet anticipation of finally having her, filling her with our hard cocks, and making her ours after all this time, pushes us faster across the clearing.
Jace and Cole are close behind me, and I know that they're enjoying this far more than they're letting on.
They're following my lead because, deep down, they know that this thing I feel for her is more than just an obsession. It’s not some fleeting fixation. It's a goddamn cataclysm.
When Bailey Asher came into my life, into all our lives, she tipped our world on its fucking axis.
I told myself that I was doing her a favor by letting her go.
The other part that makes me and my guys whole.
I convinced myself that I'd rather have her hate me for the rest of her life if it meant that she got to live one, and getting tangled up with us would have only been the end of her.
To love is to falter. To falter is to fail. To fail is to die.
For every thought I've had of Bailey, my father’s voice was always right there close behind, taking from me any shred of happiness and replacing it with the harrowing truth that we are tied to this life forever, and Bailey can never fully be ours.
Moonlight bathes the old, abandoned building in light, casting a silvery trail that leads directly to the back door we’d wisely unlocked when no one was looking earlier, just in case everything went to shit.
Good thing we did, because when Harley fucking Philips decided to prove he had a set of balls for the first time in his life, and confronted us about what he had seen us do earlier this morning, our plan to quietly lead Bailey out the back when no one was watching went straight out the window.
He apparently hated the fact that Bailey stayed with us the other night, and got it into his head that we wanted her. That she was his, even though he fucking knew she was never up for grabs in the first place. Still, Harley was right about one thing.
We do want her.
And look where his foolish attempt at getting in our way got him.
Silly fucker is lying dead in a wood chipper on the logging site that backs onto the forest, and come Monday morning, they’re gonna be awfully shocked to find that Harley’s cheating ass got a little too high, and disoriented before the party, and wandered onto the wrong property, making a fatal mistake.
I loaded him with enough shit before we dragged him into the forest that it would show up in a tox screen, if by some chance someone finds his body before they start the machine and turn him into minced meat.
The drugs in his pocket would be a nod toward a drug deal gone wrong, and thank fuck for those around here keeping it old school, because with no surveillance anywhere, nothing can be traced back to us.
That is, unless our witness decides to rat us out.
The sound of metal scraping against metal fills the silence as Cole slides the back door closed behind us. There’s not a single light on, and I figure that they probably did that on purpose to keep anyone driving past on the highway from seeing and reporting the party.
Not that it matters. We don't need light to find her.
I can feel her.
Her every breath. Her every sharp gasp of fear and curiosity awakens something primal in me, and I follow our connection like a damn bloodhound.
Jace’s shadow moves around Colton and me, locking all the windows and doors, then flicks the red strobe lights on that line the edge of the walls.
There are fake fucking cobwebs and skeletons everywhere, but my attention is on the staircase, camouflaged with decorative carved pumpkins and sugarcane, and I just know that she's up there.
The floorboards groan beneath our weight as we press our bodies against the attic wall, scanning the room for signs of movement.
Silver hues filter through the arched window, shining like a stage light on a bunch of old, wooden crates, and I swallow the laugh rising in my throat because she is so fucking cute.
They don’t offer her nearly enough cover, but I guess she had fuck all to work with up here.
Her small frame is crouched behind the crates, and I can feel her panic from here.
“Did you think you could hide from us, Bailey?” Jace taunts, his deep, menacing voice only adding to the greed and raw anticipation swirling inside me as we move to stand in the middle of the room.
The ceiling is a forest of old chains dangling from the rafters and dragging along the hardwood floor.
I can't fight the smile that creeps across my lips as I imagine them wrapped around Bailey’s body, begging for us to fill her.
Own her, and ruin her chances of ever being satisfied by another man.
“Bailey, Bailey, Bailey,” Colton says, as he crosses the room, slowly trailing his crowbar along the floor as he moves. The air around us morphs as the woman of our dreams nervously stands from behind her hiding spot, completely oblivious to the power she holds over us.
“There you are,” Jace says as he walks to stand beside Cole, but her eyes remain locked on me.
For the longest moment, I don't move. A shiver rolls over her body, and I'm not convinced it's from the dropping temperature, because everything about this moment has heat rolling off all our bodies, connecting us in a way that was always meant to be.
Her and us.
“W-why?” Bailey stutters, and I know I should put her out of her misery and give her the answers she's looking for, but I decide to play with her a little.
She wants to know the meaning of all this, but finding out the hard way is half the fun, and I know that our type of fun is what she's always craved. I take a slow step forward. Then another. Until I’m standing before her like she was out there in the forest.
Bailey wraps her arms around her middle, and my eyes drop to the exposed skin on her chest, rising and falling in rapid, shallow waves.
She’s glowing. Everything about this woman is ethereal, and she doesn’t even know it.
“What do you want with me?” she questions, looking between the three of us with wide, curious eyes, looming over her like monsters, drunk on the thrill of toying with their prey, before finally sinking their teeth in deep, and unravelling her piece by delectable piece.
To her, we're nothing more than masked shadows.
Killers.
Strangers.
But to us, she's the embodiment of all that we’ve craved, all that we’ve desired year after fucking year.
My sweet Harlequin. We are far from strangers.
The invisible string that binds the four of us together is unbreakable, whether she realizes it or not.
And there is no God, no merciful deity she could pray to, brave enough to save her from us now.
Tonight, Bailey Asher belongs to us. If it were up to us, she’d take every one of our nights—days, too.
Til’ death, baby.
Without a word, I reach into my back pocket and pull out my knife, stepping away from the shadows and into the moonlight, no longer willing to waste any more time.
My head tilts, just a fraction, as I walk toward my girl, standing still and spellbound, as if some part of her knows that her time for running is over, and that there’s no way in fucking hell we’re letting her back out of this.
Her fate is set. It has been since the moment we met, only until now, fate has always been a motherfucker.
I stand directly in front of her, and a startled gasp escapes her trembling lips when she notices the knife I’m holding, gleaming in the moonlight.
I raise my hand and trail the blade across the exposed, fragile skin of her collarbone, ever so slowly.
The sharp edge teases her, but not enough to pierce her skin, just enough for the cold blade to awaken the depraved little demon we know is hiding beneath the surface.
“W-who the fuck are you?” she spits out, seemingly unbothered by the knife now pressed against the nape of her neck, and that only causes me to laugh, low and villainous like. She was always so mouthy back when we were friends, and fuck if I didn’t miss that fire.
“The monster in all your dark, beautiful nightmares.”