Lola
Everything is black. Everything is silent, except for the dying rasp of the fire. Breathless, I stagger back from the body, boots slipping in the mud.
My legs almost give out asI clutch my arms around myself, trembling.
I look down at my hands. Smeared with red, cut up, half frozen. My shirt is torn, dotted with a spray of pink and brown, the color of blood mixed with dirt. Blood stains my neck, my thighs, the inside of my wrists.
Marcus. What’s left of him.
I can barely make out his face, flesh burnt, skin sloughing away. A ruined red mess. There’s a hollow where his mouth used to be, blood oozing from the corners. His eyes are still open—glassy, almost human—except they’re staring at nothing.
He’s not moving. Won’t move again. One leg sticks out at an impossible angle, and he’s open from the belly down, guts leaking out in strings, half-cooked, steaming in the arctic air.
I fixate on his hands. The same hands that cuffed me, bruised me, dragged me back home, held me down. Now curled, broken, fingers blackening in the heat.
No more. No more. No more.
My jaw clenches. I think I might vomit, but I won’t. Not now.
It’s snowing outside. Thick flakes drifting past the barn window, catching the moonlight. The sky is blue-black, endless. I can feel the wind even in here. In the space between darkness and blood cooling, there’s just Brody.
Brody, standing over the body.
Blood gloves his hands, arms painted scarlet, red up to the elbow. Chest bare, breaths coming in deep, snarling gulps. His face is cut up, bruised, eyes wide and wild. Alive in a way I’ve never seen, not even before.
His mouth moves, lips torn and dark, but he doesn’t say it yet. He just stares at what he’s done. At what I’ve let him do for me. Savage satisfaction, gleaming where mercy should be.
For a long second, neither of us speak. The only sound is the popping of burnt hair, the sucking noise of blood pooling under Marcus’s ruined head.
I force my lungs to work, force my legs to stay standing, numb to the pain in my ankle, my ribs, my battered face. Something in my chest twists. The horror is still there, churning up my insides. But under it. Awe. Relief. Sick, dizzy relief.
I say it before I can stop myself. Voice hoarse, shredded by smoke and terror. “I’m free.”
The words hang in the barn.
Brody looks at me then. Real, truly looks. His gaze devours me. Neck, mouth, hands, the blood on my skin. The part of him that was always hunger and violence, finally unmasked. There’s nothing human left in that stare except a craving for me.
He steps over Marcus’s body, leaving a trail of red footprints behind. When he stops in front of me, his hands are still wet, fists shaking, breaths loud.
He cups my neck, smearing blood on my jaw, tilting my face up.
“I can’t promise I’ll ever be the Brody you fell in love with,” he says, voice so low it’s barely real.
“But I can be the man you need now. The man who can love you. If you’ll have me.
I can’t undo what I did, but I can make it better by ending the monster that took you from me. ”
He waits, like the world might crack open if I don’t answer.
My heart splits. I see him. The boy I loved, crushed under years of pain, learning to kill for a father nearly as monstrous as mine. I see regret eating at him. I see darkness sweeping the rest away. The cost of every drop of blood that’s just hit the floor. Blood for me.
My voice is gone, but I find it. “Thank you,” I whisper. “Thank you.”
Brody’s eyes shine wet, like a ghost. He swallows. Steps closer. The snow outside falls heavier, sticking against the glass. It's cold everywhere. Except here, where Brody’s body is a bonfire.
I walk into his arms. He wraps me up, hard, clutching like he’ll never let go. His hands dig into my back, over my ribs, tasting every bruise, every cut. His heart beats so wild I feel it in my own chest.
We kiss. Fuck; we crash together.
I open for him, blood and need, wanting to be devoured. Wanting to be wrecked by someone who at least knows my name.
We bite. We claw. I rip at his pants, his belt, the ruined jacket with its shredded sleeves. He tears my shirt off in chunks, dragging his mouth over my shoulder, my collarbone, my tits. The cold doesn’t register. There’s only heat. Pain, pulse, living.
He lifts me, slams my back against the barn wall, fucks his hand between my thighs. Two fingers, thick, rough, deep enough to make my whole body spasm. I arch against him, crying out. I don’t care if anyone hears.
I want the world to know Marcus is dead.
Brody grinds me down to the dirt, the hay, the red-streaked ground. We’re sliding in red slush, old straw matted with blood and snowflakes. Filthy and perfect.
Marcus’s corpse is right there. Inches away. Face open, eyes open. I flinch, just for a second. The dead gaze needles into my skin.
Brody notices. His mouth is on my jaw, his hand squeezing my thigh so hard it leaves bruises. He follows my eyes, then he pulls away, calm, almost cold.
He picks up his knife, moving over to the body, where he presses one knee into Marcus’s chest, and with one smooth motion, he saws through the neck. Blood spurts up. Marcus’s head rolls away, eyes staring at nothing. Finally gone.
Brody drops the blade. He comes back to me and grabs my face in his bloody hands and kisses. “He can never touch you,” he snarls into my mouth, “You’re mine, only mine now.”
Marcus’s eyes are gone. Brody’s eyes are wild, anchoring me, putting me back together.
I can’t breathe.
There’s so much of him, everywhere. His hands on my face, his hips shoving me against the barn wall, his lips biting mine.
I see Marcus’s head, lolling in the corner, eyes open, lips peeled back in a dark red snarl. I can’t look away. I want to look away. Brody’s knee spreads my thighs. The dead man’s name slams through my head.
“Eyes on me, baby,” Brody says, forcing me to look at him.
Brody drags his mouth down my neck, leaving bruises. He rips my shirt the rest of the way off, palms my breasts, squeezes until my vision flashes white. Each bite, each twist, hurts. I want it all. I want worse than this.
His hand between my legs. Fingers rub rough at my clit, then push in, fast, mean. I’m already wet. Ready. Ruined, but burning for it. I can’t stop shaking.
He grins into the cut of my jaw, blood streaking his lips. “You’re mine,” he growls. His voice is gravel and hell and worship. “They can watch. All of them. You belong to me.”
I gasp, arching for the next touch. My nipples crush against his chest. I rake my nails across his back, and he doesn’t flinch. He wants it. He wants my marks everywhere.
He fucks two fingers up inside me, driving deep, curling and pounding, filthy and violent. My cunt clamps down, desperate and greedy, clinging for more.
He wrenches my head to show me the corpse. Marcus’s dead face, skin melting away. Staring. Watching.
Brody shoves his cock inside me. It’s thick, brutal, filling every inch. I can’t think. My back arches, banging my skull against the splintered wood.
He fucks me, wild, relentless. Each thrust sends me up the wall.
My thighs burn, coated with our blood. Sweat drips down my chest, stinging the claw marks he left.
The barn echoes with the wet slap of skin, and Brody’s savage breathing.
He bites my neck, crushes my tit, hand twisting at my nipple.
Pain blurs into pleasure. I moan for him, for everything he is and everything I’ll never get back.
Dragging my face to the right, he holds me with one big hand knotted in my hair. “Look,” he growls, voice thick, savage. “See him? That’s what I did for you. That’s what I’ll do to anyone who ever tries to take you again.”
My eyes go wide. Marcus. There’s nothing left but a head, staring, mouth gaping, blood pooling, skin curling away in the heat. And he’s watching me. Watching us. Watching Brody ruin me, own me, fuck me until I’m nothing but noise and bruises.
I can’t speak. I can barely breathe. My clit throbs. Each slap of Brody’s hips lights me up, burns every thought out.
He lets go of my hair, grabs my chin in his blood-slimed fist, and smears red across my lips. He kisses me shoving his tongue down my throat while fucking me harder.
His. Always. Forever.
The noise in the barn is breathless. Our bodies are wet and greedy, skin peeling, everything trembling with need. I can’t look away from Marcus. His dead eyes. I almost feel sorry for him. Almost. I want him to see what victory looks like, what it means to lose.
Brody’s voice is gravel. “You love how filthy you are. You love fucking me in front of him. Don’t you?”
I nod, shaking. My tits bounce with every thrust. My nipples are so hard they ache.
I reach down, rub myself fast and cruelly while he slams me against the wall.
He snakes a hand around my throat, squeezes.
My eyes blur black at the edges. I love it.
I love it. I could die with Brody’s hand on my neck and be happy.
He grins as he shifts, pulling out. I whimper, clawing at his back, trying to drag him back but he’s faster. He lays me flat on my back in the slime and hay and blood-soaked earth. Cold air gnaws at my skin.
Brody kneels between my legs. He shoves them open, so wide my groin throbs. My thighs tremble, knees to either side of his ribs, completely exposed, every ruined, filthy part of me on display.
He stares, eyes molten, dark. He drags two fingers through my wetness, smears it over my clit.
“You look so fucking good like this,” he growls, voice dropping like a stone.
He notches the head of his cock at my hole. My breath stops.
He pushes in, one hard thrust, all the way to the hilt. Too much. Too good. My pussy stretches around him. It hurts, the best kind of hurt.
He slides out. My body arches off the ground, chasing friction, chasing him. He shoves back in, brutal. I scream, and he covers my mouth with one hand, not to muffle me, just to own me, fill every hole, force everything I am to orbit him.
Brody fucks me like an animal. Like the last man left alive.
Kneeling over me, hands on my hips, he pounds into me, driving me down into the cold, the filth, until I don’t know where my body ends and his begins.
The angle—it’s deep, merciless. Every thrust slams my back against the dirt, hay scraping my skin, but I want more.
He yanks my legs up, throwing them over his shoulders. My ass barely brushes the ground. I’m exposed, wide open, stretched so full it sparks under my skin. He leans into me, cock drilling in and out, hips snapping.
Grinning down at me, his lips peeled back. “Touch yourself,” he rasps. His voice is rough, straight to the core. “I want you to play with your pussy while I fuck you. Make yourself cum for me.”
My breath shatters. I reach down, fingers shaking, soaked already.
I circle my clit, just the way I do when I’m alone and thinking of him.
It’s shameful, so dirty, but right now, that’s all I want.
He watches. Eyes glued to my cunt, the way my fingers work.
He slows, just a second, to grind all the way in so I can feel every fucking inch of him.
Too much, almost. I whimper, back arching.
My wetness is everywhere, coating him, messy and obscene.
He says it again, slower, voice like the devil. “I want to see you cum. I want you to do it while I’m inside you. Show me. I want all of it, Lola.”
I move faster, filthy circles, pinching, desperate. My body shakes. The world narrows to the burn between my legs and the thick stretch of him pounding into me. Shame and power, tangled up. I’m falling apart.
Looking up, Brody’s eyes are wild, hunger burning through. He’s stroking his cock as he does it, watching just to see how greedy my body can get.
“Fuck, you look perfect,” he hisses. His hand slams my thigh wider. “Keep going. That’s my good girl.”
I’m so close. My cunt tightens, spasms. My breath rattles in my lungs.
I lose it. Every muscle locks, goes stiff, then melts. White heat spins in my skull. I sob out his name, choking on it, my pussy clenching around him. It pulses. Fuck. It clamps so hard around him, I come messy, wet, shaking.
Brody doesn’t slow. He keeps fucking me through it, pounding in, jerking my hips up, forcing me to open wider, take every inch of him.
He pulls out at the end—just at the brink—and finishes himself, grunting, spilling over Marcus’s dead torso. Claiming victory. Planting a flag on the fucked-up ruins of my history.
I sprawl out, dazed, shaking, broken open in the best way. Brody laughs. A dark, vicious sound.
For the first time in years, I feel whole.
We pull on our clothes, hands still shaking, giggling under our breaths. Blood coats everything. Brody wipes his mouth, then he gets to work. He grabs the axe from the wall. In the moonlight, he looks like a myth, a story they tell to scare children.
He hacks Marcus’s body apart. Careful, efficient, messy. Arms, legs, head. He throws the pieces out into the snow, each limb splattering red across the white drifts. The earth soaks it up. The cold devours it. Everything vanishes under the falling flakes.
I watch, eyes dry, feeling the monster inside me finally go quiet.
When he’s done, Brody joins me outside in the storm.
We stand together under the moon. Blue-white, turning the carnage into a painting. We hold each other, arms tight. The world is all blood and bone and endless black.
There’s no sound but the wind. No witnesses but the darkness.