14. You Trust Too Easily
14
YOU TRUST TOO EASILY
REMIEL
We’re trapped between two of my demons. Ahead of us, Reeven Matterson stands on a stone platform on the edge of the Moros cemetery, conducting a midnight mass for his brainwashed followers. We’re supposed to be here for him, but behind us, slinking in the shadows of tombstones and crypts, Gregory Malone stalks me like he always does. This night was supposed to be about Matterson’s planned disappearance, but we drew Malone’s attention by accident. Or I did, because Krypt is concealed and Malone doesn’t know he’s with me.
For years, he’s been stalking me. Trying to tip me over the edge and speed my path to suicide. He taunted my younger brother so hard and for so long that he hung himself just to get away from the creep. He’s a sick bastard who thrives on controlling others, and for some reason, he’s taken our family curse as a challenge. Soren thinks it has something to do with our mom and a shared history between her and Malone, but I don’t know. He wants me so twisted up that the prospect of living becomes unbearable, and the other night, when he stalked me through the streets with my brother at his back, I almost submitted to it.
I ran to Vile House instead, knowing it was my last chance to protect myself from suicide and take matters into my own hands. To die by a hand that is not my own.
“Why was Soren with him?” I ask the darkness Krypt is crouching in. “The other night, he was with Gregory Malone when I came to Vile House, but all ten of you were there when I said my name. I don’t get it.”
“He’s not called Ghost for nothing,” Krypt says through his mask. “He has the ability to move from one place to the next without anyone noticing.”
“Why was he with Malone, though?”
“Malone haunts you, and Ghost haunts him. Your brother wasn’t stalking you. He was protecting you.”
Did he herd me to Vile House?
I didn’t know my brother cared enough to notice Gregory Malone stalking me as often as he does. I honestly thought he was trying to kill me just to end this curse—Soren’s nature rarely puts anyone above himself unless he gets something out of it. Krypt told me everything I knew was about to change, and it has. I know nothing concrete and don’t know how to start dissecting it all.
Malone is watching me. He doesn’t know Krypt is protecting me, and he doesn’t know I’m aware of him being there. He’s tried many things over the years to get me to crack, and sometimes, just watching me like this is almost enough. I hate the way his eyes feel on me. They send prickles up my spine and make my stomach queasy. It’s a form of torture he’s conditioned me to react to. Years ago, when he first started following me, I started working out. I went from having a lean body with no endurance to a hardened body with muscles that won’t fail me. All because of him.
“What do I do?” I whisper.
Krypt’s eyes are on Matterson, but at my question, he shifts his gaze to me. “Matterson can wait for another night. Right now, you’re going to walk up to Gregory Malone and give him this.”
Discreetly, I take whatever he’s holding out to me. It’s a calling card, but it’s too dark for me to read what is written on the back. “I… I don’t want to confront him. He makes me… I can’t.”
“You can and you will. And when you give him that card, he’ll know you belong to Vile House. He already knows one of us is stalking him, and now he’ll sweat knowing you’re protected by another. He needs to know we took your bargain.”
“What colour is Ghost’s mask?”
“Give him the card, Remiel.”
“What if he tries something?”
“He won’t,” Krypt says. “He’s fascinated with your suicide, not your death. Walk the fuck over there and challenge him. I’m right here.”
I’m right here.
I’ve never had anyone at my back before, and it’s enough to make me lift my chin and straighten my spine. I grip the card and turn my back to Krypt, facing Malone. Krypt calls me a hero, even though it’s mocking, and it’s time I start acting like the hero of my own life.
Stepping away from Krypt is harder than I thought it would be. The farther I get, the more my nerves intensify. Malone sees me coming, but instead of getting nervous, he gets a wicked glint in his eyes, and I just know he’s going to fuck with me. Any opportunity to push me over the edge is fair game in his book, but he saw me go to Vile House, so he should be the one sweating now.
He’s about fifteen years older than I am, and he must live a pathetic life if taunting Sauder men is where he gets his kicks. He’s married to a woman who plays a harp, but I’ve never seen her step foot in my store. Probably because she knows her husband haunts me.
“Out a bit late tonight, aren’t you, Remi?” he asks when I'm near him. “Never know what you’ll find lurking in the night.”
“I do know, actually.” I close the distance between us, standing a foot in front of him and feeling more confident than I ever have in his presence. “It’s you. It’s always fucking you lurking in my night.”
He laughs, and I hate the sound. “Wasn’t sure where you’d be now that your house is burned to the ground. Someone else trying to push you over the edge?”
Yeah, but not in the same way he is. “What happened the other night? Didn’t want to follow me into Vile House?”
His smile falters infinitesimally, and then it returns. “I respect your ability to get creative,” he says. “Just makes the challenge more fun.”
“My life being the challenge?”
“Your death,” he corrects. “Any suicidal thoughts lately, Mr. Sauder?”
Plenty, but only if Krypt is the one doing the life ending. I smile at him, sweetness soaking my features. “Guess you’ll find out.” I hold out the card to him, and he steps back from it. “If you’re brave enough to stalk me while I’m owned.” I press the card to his hand and let go when his fingers wrap around it. His face pales, and I know Krypt has walked up behind me.
Gregory Malone’s throat makes a strange sound, his eyes as wide as dinner plates as he tracks the masked demon at my back. He looks back and forth between something, but I’m not going to give this man my back to see what it is. Tonight, I’m the hero.
“Have a nice night, Greg.”
He backs away slowly, the card tightly gripped in his hand. I don’t know what it says, but he takes it and leaves, weaving through gravesites until he’s back on the street and heading somewhere else. I should feel powerful, but I don’t. I don’t instill fear in that man. Only Krypt does, but I’ll take it for now.
“What did it say?” I ask Krypt while I watch Gregory fade into the night. “The card.”
“That his suffering will be everlasting if he so much as looks at you again.”
I don’t know if I believe that, but I nod and turn around. I startle when the purple mask isn’t the only one looking back at me. Teal and white stand on either side of Krypt, and my throat dries.
Is one of them my brother? Who is the other?
“We’ll be doing the haunting from now on, hero,” Krypt says. “Gregory Malone won’t know a moment of peace until the day he dies, and trust me, that’s going to be a long time from now.”
The one in the teal mask moves fast, throwing a black hood over my head. I panic, but Krypt’s voice is in my ear. “We’re taking you back to Vile House. Relax.”
Relax? While my vision is cut off and my fate is in their hands? Not fucking likely. Krypt steers me out of the cemetery, and within a few minutes, I’m in a vehicle, sitting in what I assume is the back seat with his arms around me. The other two must be in the front because someone is driving, and hushed whispers fill the silence. After a bit of a drive and a long walk through somewhere damp and full of echoes, Krypt finally removes the hood from my head.
I blink at his bedroom, trying to get my bearings or figure out how we got here. Honestly, I’m just tired. My body is exhausted and my mental breakdown from earlier at the shop has riddled my mind with overthinking.
“Will I ever be allowed to know how we get here? I thought I wasn’t a prisoner?”
“Yes,” is all he says. “Bed,” he adds a moment later, the smell of weed filling the room.
“Can I have some of that?” I ask, climbing onto his bed fully dressed.
Krypt sits next to me, his mask no longer on. Instead of offering me the joint he’s smoking, he holds out a fresh one and puts it between my lips. It might help my mind shut down and make sleep easier, so I lean forward and let him light it.
It’s been a while since I smoked, but the taste is familiar against my tongue and the burn feels good in my lungs. I inhale a few times, listening to the paper crackle as it dwindles down.
Then Krypt says, “You trust too easily, Remiel.”
My body is sweating, but my eyes can’t see. When I come to, I don’t come back the same as I was before. I’m lucid but unaware, slow to react but not understanding the threat, and scared without knowing why or what to do about it.
I’m suffocating against something soft, but hurting because of something hard. I try to blink away the bleariness, but all I see is the dull glow of a screen that light-blinds me. The sound of moaning hits my ears, but it doesn’t sound real. It’s tinny and warped from a speaker, the volume turned down low.
I cough, and my lungs ache almost as hard as my head. “K-Krypt?”
The bed swallows me when something pushes on me from behind. Something or someone weighs me down, and I jolt when I feel fingers prodding at my ass. My naked ass.
The fear becomes much more vibrant now. “Krypt?” I try to look for him, but see nothing except the blurry screen that plays a porno. The men are indistinct because my eyes won’t focus, but the words from the speakers hit my ears.
“Ah, stretch me open. Get me ready for that big cock.”
Oh my god . I try to break free from whatever is pinning me down, but my arms don’t move how I tell them to, and my legs are numb and heavy.
“You aren’t supposed to be awake yet,” Krypt’s jittery, abrasive voice says.
“What… what are you doing?” I turn my head, but it’s so heavy. It falls against the pillow no matter how hard I try to lift it. “What are you doing to me?”
I cry out when his fingers stretch me open. The sensation is so weird and unexpected that I attempt to wiggle free. Is he seriously just… fingering my ass? Why? Why drug me for this when I offered myself to him so willingly earlier?
My body jolts when he curls his fingers, hitting a spot inside me that sparks vibrantly. “Krypt!” I shout, my voice louder now. “Stop.”
“ You stop,” he counters, adding another finger. “Go back to sleep, Remiel.”
Go back to sleep? While he’s, once again, sexually assaulting me? “No! Get off of me. This isn’t part of our deal.”
“I own you, hero. Your body comes with every aspect of our deal.”
I lift my heavy head and tilt it until my neck hurts, looking at him down the bed. He’s kneeling beside me, the iPad propped up against my hip as he watches the screen and… mimics their actions? What the hell is going on? Is he learning how to prep someone for sex?
I pinch my lips to hold in a hiss when he spears me open, but my face heats a second later when he brushes his fingers against something inside me again. I feel my dick twitch, refusing to think about it. Not again. Why does my body respond to this?
“Why do it like this, then?” I ask, the pillow dampening beneath my face. My eyes are leaking and I’m drooling, but I can’t lift my hand to wipe it away. I’m all pins and needles. “Why drug me?”
“Because you aren’t meant to see this part.” He moves his fingers inside me and I jerk at the sensation.
“What part?” I shout, voice raw. “The part where you sexually assault me for the third time?” Anger tries to claw its way to my surface, but numbness and a lazy haze chase it away.
“You weren’t supposed to know about this time.”
“By what fucking logic does that make it okay?” I snap at him.
“Does it feel good?” he asks. “Does it hurt?” Does he care?
“It’s…” I don’t know what it is because I can’t formulate a proper thought. Feeling is coming back in waves, brought on and intensified by the way his fingers pump inside me. My toes curl into the bed, yet no part of him seems to be enjoying this. It’s monotonous and unpracticed, almost clinical. “It hurts!” I settle on that. “Stop doing this and explain to me what’s happening.”
“I’m prepping you,” he says, not stopping. “If you’d rather I fuck you without prep, I can do that, too.”
When I catch a glimpse of his face, it shocks me. Because Krypt is nervous. He wants me to tell him it feels good because he honestly doesn’t know. Is he inexperienced? Maybe he’s never fucked a guy before. I don’t know anything about his sex life or his sexual preferences because I’ve never gotten to know him that way. He’s… practicing.
I fucking hate that it softens me to him.
“If you’re going to fuck me at all, I’d rather you do it while I’m aware of it,” I say instead. “Don’t rape me. Let me choose.”
“You get no say.”
“Why? I begged you to fuck me earlier, and now you’re gonna do it like this? I don’t get you.”
“Stop trying. You never will.”
There’s something like self-loathing and sadness in his voice, and I don’t understand what it means. As my muscles come back online, I force my body to roll over, but I only make it halfway. On my side, his fingers slip out of my ass, and the way it clenches feels foreign and strange. Empty.
“Look at me,” I demand.
His eyes stay on the screen and his face remains blank. His hands settle on his thighs, the right hand’s fingers glistening with lube in the screen’s glow.
“Krypt.” When his eyes meet mine, his monsters are subdued. “I… were you afraid to do this while I was awake? Are you embarrassed or something?”
“Don’t look at me like that,” he snaps at me, the tone of his voice waking up his monsters.
“Like what?”
“Like you know!” he snarls. “Like you fucking know.”
“Know what?” I yell.
He climbs atop me and presses his palm to my throat. His eyes seek the tattoo he gave me, but it doesn’t calm him down this time. He’s shaking and violent, no longer serene in his secrecy. Whatever he thinks I know, he doesn’t like it. Krypt has a vulnerability, and the twisted part of me wants to find out what it is.
“How many men have you fucked, Remiel?” he asks, barely containing his anger.
“None! I told you I’m not gay.”
His hand relaxes slightly against my throat. My fingers wrap around his wrist, but they aren’t trying to pry him off. “Then why beg me to fuck you earlier?”
“Because you make me crazy,” I admit. “I’m fucking terrified all the goddamn time, Krypt. I don’t know what I’m doing or what I’ve gotten myself into, but if this is my fate—if you are my fate—then… then a sick part of me wants to revel in you.” Holy shit, did I just admit that?
His eyes narrow. “Sick.”
“Yes! I’m fucking sick . I’m sick for wanting you even though you’ve ruined me. I’m sick for thinking I can survive you even though I want you to kill me. I’m sick for enticing you when I should be doing everything you say because you own me. Something isn’t right with me, Krypt. Can’t you fucking see that? Can’t you tell how sick I am?”
“Don’t,” he snarls. “Don’t say sick.”
“Sick!” I scream, crazed now.
“Stop it!” His hand tightens again. The muffled sound of the iPad comes from somewhere beneath the blankets, but it does nothing to draw my attention away from every single one of his inner creatures, their claws wrapped around the bars of his eyes, rattling chains and champing at the bit to break loose. “You’re sick, Keegan,” he says in a voice that isn’t his. “Something is wrong with Keegan, doctor. He’s sick! There’s a sickness in you, boy. Sick. Sick. Sick.”
Fear claws up my throat and pools in my stomach. He’s not here. He’s trapped in the past, stuck in a memory, reliving the worst parts of his life from a time before he had any power. I’ve triggered him all the way back to his childhood. To a family that treated him like a monster.
He is a monster. But I’m one, too.
Because I want to meet his inner turmoil and whip it into something that submits to him. I care about him despite how deranged he is. I care, even though he’s hurt me and abused me, used me and shamed me. His dominance entices a sinister side of me that wants to fight—that wants to force him to make me submit. Against my will. Without my consent.
I’ve never had a say in anything, and apparently, I don’t want one with him either.
I reach up with slow hands, grabbing the sides of his face. His unfocused eyes meet mine, and I greet the monsters within, speaking to them instead of him. “Fuck me.”
He trembles.
“Fuck me. Right now.”
He shakes.
“Take me. Fucking own me. Fuck me hard and match your sickness to mine.”
He snarls, choking me harder.
“Keegan.” I slap his face. “Fuck. Me.”
With a roar of absolute agony, he rips his pants off and grabs my hips, positioning himself between my legs. He’s half-snapped, trying to rein in a fraction of his control. But hesitation and vulnerability make him second-guess, and the porn he was watching makes sense. He drugged me and pulled up a ‘how-to’ video. He prepped my ass while I couldn’t watch him. He kept a secret from me out of embarrassment. The elusive, dangerous, violent, and dominant Krypt is shy.
“Are you scared?” I taunt madly.
His nostrils flare and his furious eyes never look away from my ass.
“Can’t do it? Can’t fuck me like I wanna be fucked?”
“Remiel,” he growls.
“What’s the fucking point? If I’m owned by you, and you’ll cut parts off anyone who touches me, then how the hell am I supposed to live the rest of my shitty life if you can’t even fuck me how?—”
His thick, heavy cock impales me in a single thrust, forcing the air from my lungs and burning me alive with pain. He rips me open while tearing through the confines of his vulnerability, sheathing himself inside me to prove a point to himself. To me. My eyes water in pain, and whatever numbness dulled me from the drugs is gone now, replaced by the somaesthesia of his body wrecking mine.
“More,” I demand. “Scare me! Terrify me! Show me who the fuck you are!”
Lube squelches in my ass as he annihilates me, fucking into me so hard the feeling is almost numbing. His fingers dig into my hips, bruising and battering, but I don’t care. Because I’m sick, too, and I want him to know he isn’t alone. He practiced. He opened me up. He prepped me in secret because he’s ashamed of his inexperience. He’s triggered because of a word, and I want nothing to overpower him. Not his shame. Not a word. Not me. Krypt is a sick king, and it’s time he claims his title.
My hands fall to his shoulders, hanging on for dear life as he fucks me into the bed like a beast. I don’t know what he’s feeling, but he’s caught in a frenzy of struggles. His sickness morphs with mine, and he doesn’t know how to accept it. His body acts on instincts it never has before, and his mind hasn’t caught up to his impulses.
When he looks at me, I laugh. Crazed and pathetic, but fucking joyous. Because I’m getting fucked in the ass for the first time by a man I don’t even like, and everything hurts, but the hurt feels good because I’m so fucking afraid of it. I’m terrified and crazy. I’m wrong and right about it.
He launches off the bed, dragging me by my hair to come with him. My legs are uncoordinated as feeling returns, but he pushes me to the dresser beneath the glowing purple skull light, bending me over it and kicking my feet apart. When his dick impales me again, a dagger presses against my throat.
Fear lights me up from the inside out, and when I look in the mirror above the dresser, I see it in my eyes. It’s brought me to life. In pain and suffering because of him, I’ve never felt more revived.
“Call me sick,” he growls.
“You’re fucking sick!”
He nicks my skin and draws blood. The bead of it trickles down the side of my neck and spreads over my collarbone where he tattooed me. I watch the droplet in the mirror, tracking its descent down my skin and relishing the way he coats me in deranged paint.
“Why? Why am I sick? Say it!” He presses the blade harder.
“Because you raped me over a dead girl’s body.”
He bites me.
“Because you burned my house to the ground.”
He cuts me.
“Because you gave me no other choice but to want you! Because your sickness calls out to mine and makes me feel alive! Because whatever lives in your eyes is so fucking alluring to me that I’m even sicker than you are.”
“Ahhh!” he snarls in my ear and drops the knife. He fucks me from behind, his skin slapping off mine and his cock battering my insides. I can’t even tell if it feels good because the pain of it intensifies my insanity, turning me so dark I barely recognize light. Fisting a hand in my hair and pulling hard enough to crane my neck back, he runs his teeth over the side of my neck. “Call me sick,” he says again.
Whoever called him sick in the past implied it as an insult, and I’m not going to do that. I push my ass back and buck him off, turning as he falls over his discarded shirt. He growls at me, but when he tries to get up, he stops himself. Because, once again, he’s proving a point. I’m the one going to him. I’m the one giving in to everything he’s thrust upon me. I’m the one being warped and shaped by his unforgiving hands, and I’m stalking towards him like I want more.
Because I do.
He stays on the floor, watching me from below with wild eyes and unruly hair. I don’t know when I got my coordination back, but I’ve never felt more powerful. The tingles in my legs as they regain feeling create sparks of want within me, a necessary evil I’m eager and willing to consume. I stalk him, stepping on either side of his hips. His hands land on my calves and buckle my knees, forcing me to fall to his lap.
I grab his dick and position it at my entrance, eyes on his the whole time. Because while I’m afraid, I relish the fear he brings forth in me. “Whatever makes you sick is so fucking twisted that it heals me.” I sink down on his cock, mixing pain with agonized bliss and confusion because I hate it and want it together. Krypt cries out in angry pleasure. “I need it,” I tell him as he sits up to latch his mouth to my chest, sucking more marks into my skin and fucking me from the bottom. “I need your sickness more than I need anything. Fucking give it to me, Krypt.”
He pulls me down and thrusts upward, shouting through his orgasm. Warmth spreads inside my broken hole, but it feels so good and so overwhelming that I slide against his abs, rubbing my cock all over him. When he bites my nipple and damn near breaks my hips with his hands, I bury my face in his hair and lose myself to his sickness, coating us both in cum.
Because at least it’s on my terms. This one thing.