Chapter 16
Chapter
Sixteen
TUCKER
Why do they always run to the waterfall?
The man’s boots splash through the water that’s ankle-deep at first and then rises to his waist. The river rages through the valley, crashing around him and spraying his face. I charge into the cold water, battling my way through the currents that sweep us both sideways, towards the ledge.
I throw the weight of my body forward, forcing him beneath the surface as we both tumble down.
When we both break the surface, he chokes on water lodged in his throat.
His hood slips off, giving me the opportunity to pry the fish mask from his face.
I toss the mask into the water, and it’s carried away over the falls.
He appears younger. Can’t be much older than nineteen or twenty.
He has similar facial features to the other masked man I killed in the pool with the same deep-set eyes, but they’re green.
I lift him by the fabric of the cloak, raising him from the water.
“You protect them.” He spits a mouthful of water on my face and cracks out a maddened chuckle. “You’ll die with them.”
I punch him in the face twice. His lip cracks open, the blood instantly washing down his chin from the torrential rain. I ready my fist again, angled just to the side. “Why are you after them?”
“Because of what they did.”
I tighten my fist. “Who are you?”
“You’ll never know.” He swings his fist, cracking the side of my cheek. It gives him enough leverage to break free from my grasp and rush to the edge of the waterfall. He peers over his shoulder, glancing down, then looks back at me. “Not unless you choose to join us and leave this place.”
I cock my head sideways, intrigued. “Leave for where?”
“There’s a world beyond this mountain. A big, beautiful world.”
Not a world I want to live in, but I press on anyway. “Why would I ever leave this place? Do you think I don’t know what’s out there?”
He slips on the slippery rocks and stumbles forward, then backward as his hands cycle in the air trying to catch his balance. I reach out and grab a fistful of his cloak, holding him in place.
“You’re not like them,” he yells. “There’s good in you.”
I tighten my grip. “You’ve got the wrong person.”
“Do you know what they did to your mother?” His teeth chatter, either from the cold or the fear washing over him. I suppose it doesn’t matter which. “Do they know you weren’t really there?”
I give him a shove.
His eyes widen as he reaches desperately for anything to grab onto, but all he can manage is a fistful of air.
He falls backward over the falls, his arms spread like an angel as he plummets.
He screams something on the way down, but I can’t hear him over the screams of the Wilds—the cracking of lightning, the roar of thunder, the whispering of the trees, and the rage-fueled river.
I know the wilderness like the back of my hand. I can look at a tree and tell exactly how far away the village is. I know exactly where I left Forest and make my way back to him, knowing he’d completed the job.
None of us younger folk were around the last time a leader was crowned.
That was before our time. None of us knew what would go down because we had never experienced it before.
Nobody can know I was out here. They can’t know what I did to help Forest. It would delegitimize his rule, and we’re not the type of people to exile someone. Instead, we kill.
Nobody is going to touch Forest and live to see another day. No matter how much I hunger for the crown, I hunger for him more. He’s an addiction I can’t break. He’s the only weakness I have in this life, and that makes it dangerous to be around him.
I think about the man’s last words and what they could mean.
I think about how I could have gotten answers if I could have swallowed my rage, but that’s never been my strong suit.
There’s a darkness that lingers inside of me, always one trigger away from an explosion.
He was wrong when he said I’m not like the others.
I’m so much worse. I do the things nobody else wants to do, the things that need to be done.
I can’t run away from the truth anymore.
Forest and the sanctuary crew killed my mother, and she did not pass away in a car accident on the way to town for supplies as I was told when I was younger.
I don’t give a damn what happens to the rest of them, but I’d die before anyone touches Forest. He’s the last thing I have in this world.
I stumble upon the scene of the crime, but it’s not as I imagined.
Forest sits in the mud, his back parked against a tree. Across from him, Darius’ lifeless body is pinned underneath a fallen tree. A pool of blood spills out around Darius, most of it washed away by the rain.
“I’m impressed,” I say with a smirk. “You picked up a tree and threw it on him?”
Forest doesn’t laugh, and yeah, I suppose it wasn’t the best time to make a joke. He stares blankly ahead, stoic and broken. I purse my lips and scratch at the back of my head.
“I didn’t…” he mumbles and peels his gaze upward, glistening and out of focus. “The tree fell on him.”
No shit. I nod, taking it all in. “You couldn’t do it, so the Wilds did it for you. The wilderness has spoken.”
He shakes his head violently. It looks like he’s crying, but I can’t differentiate between raindrops and teardrops. His eyes bleed red in the corners, tight and squinted. “You didn’t have to put an arrow through his leg. There was a way out of this.”
I kneel on the muddy ground in front of him. “It was always going to go this way because it was the only way it ever could.”
He sniffles and ducks away. “I’m not like you.”
“You’re exactly like me.” I grab him by the chin and pull his gaze to mine. “You’ve just forgotten somewhere along the way.”
He shoves against my chest with both hands. “Get the fuck away from me!”
I shake my head no.
He shoves again, but I’m an immovable object. He resorts to balling his hands into fists and pounding against my chest. If it were anyone else, I’d knock them out cold. It’s not anyone else, though.
It’s Forest.
My boy.
My weakness.
My addiction.
I cradle my arms around his back and pull him close to me. His sobs land against my neck and shoulder, sending shockwaves through my skin. He’s letting me hold him like this, his fingers clawing into the bare skin of my back. Scratching and scraping in equal measures rage and comfort.
I lift him by his ass, pulling his knees over my thighs.
If he gets too suspicious or too combative, I can just lie to him and say it’s to keep us both warm.
We’re both shivering cold, but the heat of his body so close to mine swelters.
He rocks his body back a bit, enough to meet my gaze.
I smooth my hand over the mounds of drenched denim and exhale, waiting for him to do that thing I really want him to do.
That thing I need him to do.
But he stills himself there with his lower lip trembling.
Such pretty fucking lips.
There’s a mudslide of dirt seeping down his face, and pretty soon, the rain and the tears will wash it all away.
When I can’t wait anymore, I pull him to my mouth and brush my lips against his. Wet lips on wet lips. Trembling lips on stilled lips. He chokes on his tears—such pretty fucking tears—and breathes against me. Contemplating.
He wants this—needs this—as much as I do.
He’s just not courageous like me. Not a go-getter.
I take him harder, chewing into his lower lip and inhaling him.
He tastes of salt, and dirt, and blood, the wilderness, and an iron hesitation that holds him in place.
I lean forward, holding onto his thighs, and shift him onto his back.
The muddy pit beneath us absorbs him, taking him into the earth.
I kiss him once more, quick and hungry. And then I find my way to his neck, sucking and biting.
His hand dances in my hair, tangling it around his fingers as I kiss every part of him visible over his clothing.
I shift my body above his, digging my knees deep into the mud on either side of him.
I grab his shirt with both hands and tear down the middle, folding the torn fabric outwards to give myself the best possible view of his tattooed chest.
I nip at his right nipple, circling my tongue around the barbell piercing.
He lets out a gasp and arches back, dipping the back of his head into the mud.
I trail my tongue down the path of a long chain inked into his skin that leads to an anchor half-parked beneath the waistband of his stained white briefs that peek out underneath his jeans.
His fingers grasp at my hair as I pull his jeans and briefs down his thighs. His cock slips free, landing with a smack against his tattooed stomach. He’s hard, the head of his cock throbbing and the piercing in his cockhole singing. I peer up at him with a grin and he focus himself to look away.
Must be fucking awful for him to know that I know he wants this as badly as I do.
I palm his pretty cock in my hand. It’s shorter than mine and much more slender. I was always bigger, and he was always the beggar. The world is starting to make sense again. He doesn’t say the word, please. But his body does the talking, his chest heaving and his throat expanding and falling.
I take his cock in my mouth, running my tongue over his piercing. Tastes like fucking metal.
The things I do for love.
More than metal, it tastes like him and everything that entails.
A hint of danger. A hint of stubbornness.
A hint of the sweetest fucking candy. I smear salty pre-cum over his head with my tongue as I pump his shaft with my hand.
He responds with euphoric agony, fingernails finding their way to my scalp and scraping.
He lifts me by the head, pulling me from his cock and dares me to look him in the eyes.