Chapter 29
Twenty-Nine
Penny
Adrian didn’t speak; he just laid on me, his cock stretching my ass out, my body twisted up underneath him.
His cock softened with every passing minute, but remained buried in me, crushing both inside and out.
I ached where he’d driven into me over and over, but it was the good kind, where I wanted more, where my body was used and abused in the best way.
He’d come so hard his entire face had contorted, his muscles turning into an elastic band about to snap, and now he was jelly, soft and warm. It was a stunning sight, one worth staying alive for.
Like this, I could just pretend we were still in the prison, where, shockingly, things had been easier, less toxic. Boundaries clear and limits only tested, not crossed.
I played with the gun in my grasp, not sure of how many bullets it contained, while I waited for him to revive. But we were three down.
As soon as he remembered how to be an alive human, we would be right back at this game.
“Adrian,” I sighed, running my fingers through his sweaty hair. “It’s my turn, and killing you while you’re crushing me won’t end well for me either.”
He laughed, actually laughed, and lifted himself up, working those thick arm muscles to hover above me. There was… tenderness there, I think. Didn’t know what that looked like from a man. Not when it was real. I doubted this was real either.
The softness I thought I’d seen from him in the prison was a lie; this was nothing like it.
For a moment, I think I saw the real him, what this could be if we’d met in normal circumstances.
It was wrong, weird. It made him sick too, and that affection blinkered away as he realized the same as me – that we were drifting too far from what we had to be.
Post-orgasm clarity struck him, and he sat up, not letting my legs fall to the bed yet. Fuck, my thighs ached, my ass throbbed. He stared at where he’d fucked me, my body all puffy and abused, and looked so damn satisfied with himself.
With slow movements, I pointed the gun at him. He tipped his head to the side, so dark and wicked, so many thoughts behind those pretty, moody eyes, and lowered himself down, ignoring the point of death as he slipped down the bed.
Without taking his eyes off me, he swiped his tongue through my spent hole. “I want you to die with my cum on your tongue,” he told me, sucking, probing deep inside me, pushing and searching. It was soothing, delicious, caused shivers over my skin.
He groaned when there was a gush when I pushed and his cum flooded out of me. Fuck, it felt good, soothing. His eyes rolled as he ate me, swirling that violent tongue of his inside my ass, searching for all of himself he could.
When he sat up, I fired the gun. Nothing. A click. His nostrils flared, and he looked at the tip of the barrel for one angry second before coming back to me. With his mouth full, he let my legs drop, at fucking last, and pressed his nose to mine.
I knew what he wanted. I opened my mouth. Our lips brushed as he opened his too and spat his cum onto my tongue. All of it, every heady drop, into my waiting mouth. It coated my teeth, my throat, but I didn’t swallow.
I understood this man now: his kinks, what made him burn with desire. “Kiss me, Darling,” I murmured, trying not to choke.
His nostrils flared again, but a second later, he slammed his mouth to mine, kissing me so hard our teeth bashed together and our noses smashed, cartilage grinding.
I cried out, grabbed him, let him consume me as we passed his cum back and forth between us until it was all gone, until only spit and aching, awful desire remained.
His tongue warred with mine, his hand flying to my jaw to hold me still. I let him devour, digest, wipe me away and replace me with who he wished I was.
And when my body relaxed, and his wrapped around me, I grabbed the gun and pointed it at his head, firing just once, once more, into his temple.
He froze. His lips on mine but unmoving. His eyes opened, narrowed, and moving slow, like a damn panther, he unwrapped himself from me and sat up on his haunches.
“You’re a dirty cheater,” he accused, taking the weapon from me.
That was number five. How many were left? They were all for me, I was sure.
But he only stared at me, pointing the gun at my heart. He leaned on it, leaving a deep indentation in my chest, making it feel like it was going to cave in with the pressure.
I didn’t squirm, didn’t fight him, even when my chest wanted to squeeze and I had the urge to splutter and kick him off.
“This is the last one,” he told me, whispered so harsh, shadows and evil crossing over his face, twisting up his handsome features. “This one, meant for me, now yours.”
His fingers drifted to the trigger, shifted between us, grinding the metal in harder, crushing bone and muscle.
“Do it,” I urged again, voice strained, so ready for this to be all over. I wanted to see what was on the other side; I wanted him to win.
If he’d done something to Lacey, if he’d lied, I didn’t want to know. If I could just blinker out of existence, if he could take the fear and concern and lack of knowing… one small bullet, into my skull, and I’d never have to think again.
I braced for it.
He roared, ripped the gun from between us and fired it off into the room with a loud, crashing bang. The bullet launched from the chamber and slammed into the full-length mirror by the bathroom door, shattering the glass with an almighty shriek of noise.
He glared at me, so much hatred and confusion surging through him. Through me, too. We were both breathing heavy, angry. Panting and scowling, fiery.
With the gun making his knuckles white in his grasp, he stood and stormed away, the door slamming shut behind him.
My heart continued to pound for what felt like hours, and he didn’t come back.
I must have drifted to sleep for a bit, my body and mind too overwhelmed, crashing down hard. I needed another shower to clean his cum and spit from between my legs, but my brain switched off, sent me into a beautiful, dreamless sleep.
When I woke, it was clear hours had passed because the light coming through the gaps between the heavy black curtains had shifted, lightened. Was it morning? I had no idea what time of day it was, what day of the week it was. Even the month was foggy.
Another thing I noticed right away was how slack my bindings were. The tie around my wrist had loosened from the pressure of my weight on it. It was easy to slip my hand free — shocking, almost.
For the first time since I’d been here, I was alone and not tied up in any way. I sat up, rubbing the raw marks on my wrist, and looked over the room with fresh eyes.
This was his sex room, maybe not his actual bedroom. But how many rooms could a small place like this have? Maybe it was both. I was suddenly rageful at the idea of him bringing any other person here. It was too intimate, too showy.
This bed had metal bars along the frame, high up on the headboard with hooks every few rows. The walls were painted black, the curtains and other furnishings just as dark. Even the other furniture, a dresser and a small armchair, all black, old looking.
I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and stood up, wobbling. I would pee, maybe run a soapy flannel through my undercarriage, then hunt the man down. Wherever he was, I was unsure if I had long. He had plans, that was so obvious it was painful, but where was he?
After sorting myself out in the bathroom, I dressed in one of his t-shirts and searched for something to use as a weapon. It was back in the bathroom that I found his razor, and it didn’t take much to free the blade from the plastic.
It would do. The gun we’d used in our sex game was gone.
I could benefit from some ingenuity if I wanted to— not get out alive, but…
Opening the door, I half-expected him to be waiting there with a refilled gun and a scowl meant just for me, but there was only emptiness. He wasn’t in the narrow, wood-paneled hall, and he wasn’t in the first room I came across, a small kitchen.
He was nowhere at all in this small apartment, so I left it, yanking open the front door and finding myself in another hall.
This one led me into the theater, a meandering, confusing maze of halls with many doors leading from it. Stock rooms, customer toilets, a work room, it was all along this hall. And still no Adrian.
Maybe he’d left me here to rot.
Maybe he was done.
But that didn’t feel right.
No, of course we weren’t done. I found him.
And it was easy. He was right there. As I stepped into the theater itself, I found him sitting in the front row; a dusty television wheeled onto the stage, what looked to be a family video playing.
Retro. A few decades old, at least.
The razor grew heavy in my palm as I walked down the middle aisle, closer to him. He knew I was here; I could tell from the fresh tension in his shoulders, but he made no moves to subdue me or turn me away.
He didn’t say a word as I sat down next to him, the old, faded velvet scratching my bare thighs.
“What are we watching?” I asked, squeezing the razor until it pierced through my palm. The tension of the moment, the false casualness, could snap any second.
“Your victim and his family on this stage, fucking frolicking and innocent,” he spat, waving an arm, still keeping his eyes off me.
The bitterness in his voice was awful, caught in the back of my throat, but I turned away from his angry face and looked at the screen.
A group of kids, maybe in their early teens or just before, were on the stage before us, with little marionette puppets in each of their grasps as they performed a show. There was laughter, an audience, and big wide grins from everyone.
“It seems so old-fashioned, even what, twenty years ago,” I commented, smiling at all the happy young faces. I recognized Adrian’s, all chubby but still a bit scowly, and the boy next to him, who was clearly his brother. Jake. The man I’d killed in what they told me was cold, brutal blood.
“It was,” he said, his voice warmer that I’d heard it, almost wistful, sad. “But my parents loved it. They met here, you know. It was special to them. Made it special for us, too. They both got their love for it from their parents, and it passed down, I guess.”
I didn’t get it, didn’t understand the connection to a dilapidated place like this, but I don’t think I was supposed to understand. He had no desire or need for me to.
Adrian was confused too; that was clear in every action he took. In how he flip-flopped from professing my death to fucking me into an orgasm. Giving and taking, ruining and wrecking. He knew what he wanted about as much as I did. I think.
“I can be your marionette, if you want,” I said, gesturing to the ropes hanging from the rafters. “You can do that to me again.”
“It means nothing when you want it.” His voice grew darker, his hand clawing into the armrest. I noticed the gun in his other hand and wondered if he’d reloaded it. No more games. “It was supposed to hurt; you were supposed to be afraid, to beg like… like he did.”
My heart squeezed, and I curled forward. Jake Darling, again. That man, the one I’d lured away from his friends, from his brother. He wanted to fuck me, a woman he had just met. He wrapped his hand around my throat in the alleyway when I kissed him.
I didn’t know if it was going to go further, if he had plans to hurt me. I knew that now with the clarity of time it was a normal thing, but then, that was enough to sign his death warrant. That, and his relationship to the detective working on my case.
Jake took the drink I gave him with such ease, chugged it down with a grin on his face, and when he went all sloppy and let me guide him away from his life, he kept promising me the time of mine.
Regret.
I actually fucking felt regret.
But Adrian had no way of knowing that. That was too much, too vulnerable. If I told him that, this might all crack, shatter. It couldn’t. Not yet.
So I pushed instead.
“He cried for his life,” I said, voice hard. “He begged for you, his big brother, to come save him. He begged me not to do it, but I did anyway. And I made it hurt. He laid there, unable to move, but still begging with his last breaths.”
Adrian stiffened, and knowing I would fail, I lunged for him, razor above my head, ready to take what he wanted to give.
He caught me; the razor suspended above our heads, and looked from it to me. “I should kill you and fuck your dead body, bring you no more pleasure,” he said, promise in his gaze, anger renewed, his grief feeding it.
“Do it then,” I demanded. “Fucking do it, Adrian. My head hurts.”
The gun came across my temple with a hard thump, and I fell to the side, slamming into the seats and then onto the floor. The world swam as he stood and placed his feet on either side of me, looking down, the gun pointed between my eyes.
“I will,” he promised. “I fucking will. Because no matter what happens, what I try to do, we end up back here. You have to die, little killer. It’s the only way the world can be free.
The only way I can be free.” His voice built to a scream, cracking, rageful, bellowing straight into my face.
I took it, flinched, but stayed, eyes right on his.
Tension intensified between us with the gun piggying in the middle. I’d had my hands wrapped around the handle, and almost been able to end his life.
Now mine was in his.
And I was ready.