27
Manson
Once again I have to curse myself for not being able to read his mind. I don’t like the look in his eyes, the energy radiating off of him feels akin to mourning, and it doesn’t fucking make sense. Things are going good here. All three of us have smiled more the last week than we have in years, and now Asher is sitting here looking like he’s about to pull the plug. Mr. Self-Sabotage is about to self-sabotage yet again, only this time I’m getting fucked in the process too. I just don’t understand why. “Why are you looking at her like you’re about to say goodbye?”
She’s sleeping against him like she doesn’t plan on going anywhere, but we all know how Ash is when he’s made up his mind about something.
“I’m not,” he deflects, but I see the way his hand tightens on her shoulder. “It’s not fucking real, Manson. She’s been telling us since day one it would never be real. Don’t you remember? Her submission would never be anything more than survival.”
I hate that he remembers that, and I hate that she said it. I’ve been trying to pretend those confessions never happened, but nothing could ever erase them from my mind. At least I’m not alone there. “I thought it didn’t matter?”
“It didn’t.” He scowls, tugging the blanket a little higher on Rhea’s shoulders. “It fucking didn’t.”
“What changed?” I ask, my tone a little more pleading than I expected. “Tell me what changed.”
Say you love her or I might actually punch you in the face.
He’s silent for so long I think he might actually do it, but I should’ve known better. “Punishing her doesn’t feel good anymore. That was the whole reason I did this shit to begin with. So if I can’t punish her and everything else will forever be fake, what the fuck is the point?”
My fists tighten with the urge to hit him, but I manage to hold myself back for now because he’s finally trying to communicate. “What are you suggesting we do then, hmm? We’ve taken every dime she had, hid her car, kept her captive. What are you even trying to say, Ash?”
“That I want to fucking undo it!” he hisses. “Fucking all of it. I want to go back to the day she showed up here with her desperate fucking murderous eyes and slam the door in her face harder. I want—” She stirs, shutting Asher up just long enough for him to take her to her bed and lay her down. When he comes back alone, I already know it’s too late to change his mind. “It’s over, Manson. All of it.”
“No,” I argue, getting to my feet to stand my ground. “Why do you get to decide that alone? You got us here. You! All I’ve wanted is for us three to live in peace, and now that I finally have what I want you’re going to fuck it all up? Fuck you, Ash.”
This isn’t the first time he and I have had to fight through an issue, but I could probably count on one hand the number of times I’ve stood up to him like this. It isn’t because I’m scared of him, it’s because I respect him, but this? This I can’t respect.
“So what, then? You want to keep her here, knowing damned fucking well that she’s probably thinking about how much she hates you when she sucks you off? That you fucking disgust her? But because she puts on a pretty smile and kisses you all sweet, you’re willing to just ignore that, right? Grow the fuck up, Manson. Think it through. She’s only sweet and touchy and amenable because she knows that’s the only way to make it through the day without getting cuffed to a goddamn bedpost or shocked until she’s near ready to piss herself. Does that sound like fucking happiness to you?”
I might hate him for being right here. The urge to deck him for it has me taking a step forward, but the fact that I can see he’d take my fist gladly has me stopping short. He wants the physical pain because it will always hurt less than the emotional kind, and I’m not going to be the reason he gets relief there. Not this time. We’ll suffer this together. “No. It doesn’t.”
Being honest about it stings, but he brought logic to this argument, and in reality all I’ve brought is childhood abandonment issues and trauma. What a fucking pair we make.
His voice shakes as he takes a step closer. “I can’t even fucking look at her anymore. I told myself all these years that she was just a miniature version of her fucking bitch mother, but when she chose not to pull the trigger, I...”
He doesn’t have to finish it. I know. When she proved he was wrong about her, everything else turned to ash. He couldn’t avoid what he was doing to her anymore, the sick things we’ve done. It wasn’t revenge anymore, it wasn’t divine or just or anything of the sort. It was just cruel.
“Fuck,” I hiss, my hands tugging on my hair angrily. “So how do you see this being fixed? Letting her g—” I clear my throat. “Setting her free?”
“Wake her up. We’ll spend one more evening with her, but put something in her hot chocolate tonight when we go out to see the stars. Once she’s out, we’ll... we’ll pack her things, get her car, and take her to Blair’s. She already knows.”
If he talked to Blair about this, he’s been planning it longer than just today.
I narrow my eyes at him. “If I didn’t press you about this, did you plan on doing it behind my back?”
“No, of course not.” He softens, stepping forward. “I don’t think I’d have the balls to do it without you. I called Blair a few nights ago because she’d know better than anyone how Rhea really feels right now. I called her to talk me off the ledge, but she did the fucking opposite.”
My body relaxes with someone else to aim my anger toward. I hate being mad at Ash, I just don’t see how that’s going to change for a while. “She offered her a room?”
“She did, yeah. Told me she still hates us both, but that Daddy would kill her if she turned Rhea away. She’ll protect her. Probably better than we ever could.”
That’s bullshit and he knows it, yet as I think of her sitting in the truck as bullets flew, I think I might know what he means. “I fucking hate this, you know that?”
“You and me both. Now go wake her up, we—”
“Me?” Rhea asks, making me whip around toward her. I’m worried about how much she heard until I realize that she isn’t awake at all. Her eyes are distant, unfocused. She’s having a fucking episode.
“Damnit. We can’t wake her up now,” I mutter, moving over to take her in my arms. “Hey, baby. You miss us?”
She curls against me like she was always meant to be there, reaching down to palm me. “I always miss you.”
“Fucking joke,” Asher mutters. “Guess the universe just handed us one last opportunity to be the worst people to walk the earth.”
I hate how his words do nothing to stop my dick from getting hard. “She needs us, Ash. Guess she’ll be going to Blair soon instead.”
The thought makes us both angry as I lift her up and carry her to my bed, because if this is the last time we’ll ever have her I think I deserve to have the memories be here. Not in his.
Her fingers tangle in my hair as she kisses me fully, deeply, wrapping her legs around me and pulling me in until I start to think Asher’s insane.
We can’t give her up. Who will take care of her when she’s like this? Fucking Blair?
While I don’t doubt our girl could find release with her, it’d never be what she fully needs because what she needs is us. Our darkness dances with hers, and that isn’t something that can be replicated. I can hear his heavy breathing behind me as I get her out of her panties, but I ignore him completely until I’m sinking deep inside her with a groan. “She’s ours. She will always be ours.”
“Yours,” Rhea repeats, gasping my name as I drive myself deeper. “I’m yours.”
She knows it. No matter what state she’s in, she knows it. She’s ours, she fucking needs us. Needs me .
And Asher’s trying to take her away.
“Manson.”
I ignore him, fucking into her harder and harder so she’s writhing below me and coming all over my cock. “She needs this.”
I can feel myself nearing the edge as I lose myself, but I manage to pull back from that ledge so it doesn’t end yet. I never want it to end.
“Listen to her,” I rasp. “Listen to her moan, listen to her beg. She doesn’t want to fucking leave!”
“It’s not real.”
Even now I can hear he’s struggling to believe himself, but how can she be faking this? The sex is one thing, but her saying my name, her saying she misses me? How is it not real?
Her words play on a loop in my head, the ones I try hard not to think about, and regardless of what I want to believe, she couldn’t have been clearer. “My obedience, my submission? It’ll never be real. You’ll never earn it. Enjoy me while I’m sleeping, because it’s all you’ll ever get...”
We’re not about to lose her... she was never ours.
“Fuck!” I slam deep inside to fill her up one last time, and when I try to look at her face again, I understand what he meant when he said he can’t even look at her anymore. It hurts.
Yet she’s looking past me anyway, to Asher. “Why are you hiding? Don’t you want me?”
Swallowing, Ash steps in closer to slide his hand down her face. “I want you. I’ve always wanted you,” he admits, and as much as it sucks I move out of the way so they can have their goodbye too. “You want me, Rhea?”
She smiles, and it’s so pretty it’s almost jarring. Like all that uncanny valley bullshit, it’s not real, but it is real, and it’s just strange enough to make you pause. “Of course, Ash. Don’t you believe me?”
Unable to fight it, he strips off his clothes and leans in to flick her clit with his tongue, then shoves his cock inside roughly. “You fuck me up, pet.”
He’s whispering just for her, but I’m not going anywhere. Maybe if she says the right things, if she’s good enough, he’ll change his mind.
“I’m sorry. I don’t want to fuck you up, I — I just need more.” She hooks her legs around his ass and pulls him in, baring her neck for him. “Please.”
For a second I think he might take off her collar so he can suck and mark all over her neck, but when he tosses it aside, it isn’t his mouth that finds her skin, it’s his hand.
Ash wraps his palm around her throat and squeezes, barreling into her like he wants to snap her in half, and Rhea moans like it’s exactly what she wanted.
“Harder,” she whispers. “Come on, baby. Hate me.”
“I can’t,” he growls. “I’ve tried and tried and all it’s ever done is make me love you.” Ash releases a shuttering breath as his hips begin to slow down, and although she’ll never actually hear the words from him, I feel pride in my chest that he admitted it to himself. Even if it’s made him spiral.
“Come on, Ash. She needs you to fuck her harder. Give our girl what she needs.”
Don’t lose yourself now.
Nodding, Ash focuses back on her and takes all of his pain and frustration out on her pussy, his mouth crashing to hers messily.
We taught each other how to kiss when we were in middle school, but in all our years he’s never kissed me the way he’s kissing her right now. Probably because we’ve never had to say goodbye.
She cries out when he makes her bottom lip bleed but I know her body so well, I recognize the way she tenses up, the way she rolls her hips with an orgasm. She was made to take the pain we were born to inflict.
And Ash knows it too.
Feeling her lose it under him has him lifting her legs up even higher so he can unleash, his hips pounding into her so hard I know she’ll feel him for days, and when that sends him over I can hear how angry he is that nothing has changed. This is still the end.
“Goddamnit, pet. Was there any world where this could have worked?”
I don’t know if he asks it expecting an answer or not, but Rhea seems to sense the sadness radiating off of him enough to pull one together.
“What do you mean? This is working. You said you wanted me.”
“I do,” he whispers, kissing her cheek, her nose, her lips. “Go to sleep, baby. Everything is going to be okay.”
If he follows through with this shit, none of us are ever going to be okay again. But the more I watch her, watch him, the more I realize that this might be the first selfless thing he’s ever done in his life.
Who am I to stand in the way?