Chapter 17
Chapter
Seventeen
FOREST
The stage is set for a romantic dinner in the absurdly large dining room of Wilde Manor.
There are twenty-three chairs and only two of them are occupied. I’m seated halfway down one side and Tucker sits directly across from me, chowing down on a meatloaf and biscuits. There are a handful of candles lit on the table, casting a soft orange glow on the center of the dining room.
A romantic dinner? Not quite, but that’s the mood. Tucker prepared the food, hand-selected a bottle of wine from the most recent foraging trip into town, and placed all the candles. He still refuses to let me out of his sight for more than a minute at a time. I’ve stopped fighting him on it.
“Do you remember the first time we went out hunting?” Tucker asks from across the table.
I have to think about it for a moment, digging through the memories in my mind.
It was an early autumn morning. It was just before sunrise and my father took both Tucker and I out into the woods.
Tucker’s father died of natural causes at a young age, so even though Filo and Pearl weren’t together yet, Filo treated Tucker as his own. “We were what? Eight years old?”
“Something like that.” He palms his glass of wine and smiles. “We had no business being out there. That damn bow was nearly as big as we were.” He takes a sip of wine and sets it back down with a gentle clink. “What else do you remember?”
“That we were best friends until we weren’t.
” I stab my fork into the last bit of meatloaf on my plate and stick it in my mouth.
“I remember the worst parts. The games that always ended badly and the curiosity that was always squashed. I remember the first time the elders sent us out to hunt that guy who’d only been here for a few weeks. ”
“David Clarkson,” Tucker whispers. “I haven’t thought about him in ages.”
I sigh. “Well, I never really stop thinking about him.”
He takes another swig of wine and smiles with wet lips. “They say you don’t forget your first.”
“They say that about your first love, Tuck. Not about your first kill.” I roll my eyes and drop my fork onto the plate. “Or hell, maybe they do.”
“I remember my first,” he says pointedly. “Love, I mean.”
I palm the neck of the untouched glass of wine, contemplating saying what’s been on my mind for a few days now.
In the week since the chaos of the crowning, I’ve been forced to reflect on what transpired.
Slurping the jizz from his fingers in the shower?
It happens. Letting him fuck me against my father’s casket?
Grieving is messy. Finishing him off every morning after?
Stockholm syndrome. Riding his cock in a fucking pit of mud after he tossed someone over a waterfall and I watched my cousin get splattered by a tree? A pattern begins to emerge.
I’d be stupid to ignore it.
“I’m not saying you’re right about anything, but—” I grit my teeth, unable to believe I’m actually about to say the quiet part out loud.
I shake my head and catch his gaze, waiting for me to continue.
“I’m pulled to you like a magnet, like a force I can’t describe.
Like the gravitational pull of your first love, the one you can never really leave behind. I don’t remember my first love—”
“It was me,” he cuts me off, so sure of the words coming out of his mouth.
“Maybe.” I shrug. “Maybe not.”
He punches the inside of his cheek with his tongue, irritated. “Then why bring it up?”
“Fuck,” I groan and shift back in my seat.
“I’m broken, Tuck. I’ve been broken for as long as I can remember.
I used to think it was this place that broke me, but out there, I never really got better.
” I look anywhere but at him and settle on looking right past him at the mural of the Wildes painted on the wall.
“I’ve never been loved, and I’ve never loved anyone. Not that I can remember.”
“You loved me.”
“Maybe,” I say pensively. “Maybe not.”
He smacks his hands together, feigning prayer. “Please stop saying that.”
I give him an amused huff. “I didn’t know please was in your vocabulary.”
His eyes roll upward, disappearing into his head. “Please don’t make a big deal out of it.”
“You said it again.” I laugh. “Are you turning over a new leaf, Tucker White?”
“You call me Tucker Wilde,” he seethes, narrowing his eyes.
“There’s the man I know.” I grab the glass of wine and slosh it around before taking a drink.
“You want to know what I think?”
I peek over the rim of the glass. “I think you’ll tell me, regardless.”
“You don’t want to be treated like you’re fragile. You get off on being told what to do. You don’t want me to be nice. You need me to be who I’ve always been.”
“Maybe—”
He wags his finger in my face. “I dare you to say it again!”
I’m not naive enough to believe he actually wants me to say it again. It’s a threat. The words teeter on the edge of my lips before they slip out in a playful whisper, “Maybe not.”
“Get over here,” he growls, scooting his chair back. “Now.”
I swallow a healthy dose of hesitation, my feet tapping on the hardwood.
He shifts further back, the feet of the chair scraping over the wood. “I’m not going to ask again.”
Well, you never actually asked at all.
I wipe my mouth with a napkin, toss it onto the table, and get up from my chair.
Because of the god awful design of having too many fucking chairs at a table that’s too fucking long, it takes me a minute to make my way over to Tucker.
I pencil in a mental note to renovate the dining room once things have settled down.
Settled down? What the fuck is wrong with me?
Why am I pretending as if I’m going to be here any longer than I have to be?
Then again, why the fuck am I still here?
When I meet Tucker on the other side of the table, there’s something in his dangerous eyes that grounds me in place. That keeps me here.
“Why did you come over here?” he snarls.
I state the obvious, “Because you told me to.”
He snickers, amused.
“Get on my lap,” he commands.
I let out a nervous chuckle. “No.”
“I’m not going to tell you again.”
I stand my ground for a brief moment before I crumble. I sling one arm over the back of his neck as I take a seat on his lap sideways, my feet kicked over the side of the chair. “I think you are the one who is supposed to take orders from me.”
“Not like this.”
I roll my eyes to the side, confused.
“Get up,” he barks.
And again, I do as I’m told, unwrapping my arm from the back of his neck. He shifts the chair sideways and pats his lap. “Lie down on your stomach.”
I freeze. “You can’t be serious.”
He flattens his lips, waiting.
My heart skips a beat, and I swear it’s loud enough that both of us can hear it in the quiet of the dining room.
I choke on an amused laugh as I sprawl out over his lap.
I’m not the biggest guy in the world, but I’m far too big for this to work ergonomically.
I reach for the chair beside us and drag it over to steady my hands and head on.
“You know I have a problem giving up control, right?” he asks, running a hand over my denim-covered ass. “That being said, I think you like giving it up.”
“Is that a question?” I cock my head over my shoulder to find a disapproving glare being shot my way. “Sometimes.”
I get a hunch at what’s happening here. He’s testing the limits of my authority. Where mine ends and where his begins.
He runs his fingers underneath the waistband of my jeans and tugs them down over the curve of my ass.
My eyes shoot up to the ceiling. He does the same with my briefs, pulling them down just enough so that the warm air breezes over my bare skin.
His hand is rough and calloused on my flesh.
He possesses the hands of a working man, and that does something to me.
It makes my cheeks flush and my cock harden in his lap.
He rubs his rough hands over my smooth ass in slow circles, passing over my crack. My hole throbs every time he nears it and I bite into my lower lip, waiting for him to slick a finger and stick it inside.
He retreats, pulling his hand away from me.
Smack.
I jerk in place, but he holds me still as the sting reverberates through me.
Smack.
My feet kick against the floor.
Smack.
My mouth drops open, letting out a groan of pain that oddly sounds like a moan of pleasure. He rubs his hand over the reddened area lovingly. Slow, careful circles soothing the pain away. When he’s done, he releases me from his grip and I climb off his lap, pulling my underwear and jeans back up.
He watches me carefully, contemplating. “I don’t dare question the will of the Wilds. I honor you as my chosen leader, but when it comes to this, when it comes to us, I’m in control.” He latches onto my wrist, forcing me to look him in the eyes. “Do you understand me?”
I’ve never been the dominant type. I’m really not even fit to be a leader, so I make no objections. “I understand.”
“Forest, I want to show you something.”
Right now? “Sounds scary.”
“It’s not,” he whispers. “I promise.”
Tucker leads me through the living room and into the library that’s shrouded in pitch-black darkness.
I stand at the door as he makes his way behind the desk and grabs hold of a single book.
He pulls it back and the sound of a latch echoes from within the walls.
He pushes forward, and the bookcase rotates inward, revealing a dimly lit stairwell.
Did I know this place had secret passages? Is this one of the many things I’ve forgotten?
“Come,” he says, stepping into the light.
The staircase is narrow and twists upwards about two floors. At the top landing, there’s another door. He reaches his hand out to me and he’s met with a confused glare. He exhales sharply and grabs the necklace holding the skeleton key from around my neck.
I’m not good with surprises. I actually hate them. Call it a trauma response, but I can guarantee I’ve never been surprised and thought to myself, gee, that was fun. I steel myself for what’s waiting on the other side of the door as Tucker turns the key and pushes the door open.
Inside there are hundreds of paintings, most of which are of the same man’s face.
Tucker slinks away to the corner of the room with a new emotion written all over his face. He’s sheepish, waiting for me to respond to the landmine of whatthefuckery I just walked into.
I’ve seen my own face enough to know who I’m looking at in these paintings.
My eyes are always the same, brushed to an impossible level of accuracy.
My hair is different in every painting, though.
Different colors and different cuts. My face stays mostly consistent, but there isn’t a tattoo or piercing in sight.
Beyond the rows and rows of portraits is something even more damning. There’s a collection of paintings, sexual in nature. I’m bent into every position imaginable.
“What the fuck is this, Tucker?”
“You.”
I snap my attention to him wallowing in the corner. “Why would you show me this?”
He chews on his thumbnail that’s pulled to his mouth. “I thought it’d help you remember.”
“All of this…” It’s too much to take in. My gaze is torn between one painting and the next, and then another. Total whiplash for all six of my senses, yes, including the sense of the Wilds. The sense that scratches at the inside of our heads when something is amiss. “This isn’t…”
Fuck. I drag my palm over my face, trying to settle my thoughts.
Tucker’s shadow falls over me, and I’m torn between fighting and running. “See what I see.”
I move my mouth to speak, but the words don’t come out. Obsession. I see obsession. I see sickness. I see how unfucking normal this all is, and then… a part of me just doesn’t care. A part of me sees the beauty in the paintings. The talent.
“When did you learn to paint?” is the question that finally comes out, and I’m not proud of it.
“After you left, I realized I needed a hobby to keep my mind off of things.”
I continue to sort through the paintings, trying to find anything to cling onto. Anything that will give this a sense of purpose. Anything to remember what he so desperately needs me to remember. I inch forward, towards a painting of Tucker and I enveloped in a thick fog.
“When we were younger, we talked about leaving this place all the time.”
“You wanted to leave this place?” I scoff. “Tucker, I find that very hard to believe.”
“It was right before our parents married.” He steps forward, squats in front of the painting, and points to us. “We threw some food and water in a burlap sack and made our way down the mountain. We almost made it out.”
“What happened?”
He stands back up and joins me at my side. “The fog choked us. It got thicker and thicker until we had no choice but to turn back. That’s the last time I dreamed of leaving this place.”
A cold chill passes over me, the memory of it snapping into place like the last piece of a jigsaw puzzle. The cold, frosty air and the fog that cried out in pain as if every step we took was cutting into its very essence.
I stand beside Tucker without saying another word.