five
Duke Dolce
Substances help with that. Alcohol, molly, pills, and then, finally, the pearl lady.
With enough of anything in me, it didn’t feel like I was walking around flayed while everyone else had a skin suit to protect them.
I was always raw, every grain of sand stinging, every word or look or rejection, a hot match to an exposed nerve.
I sit up, reaching for my jeans. I need one now, need Lady Alice to take me by the hand and lead me to Wonderland.
The door swings open, and Baron strolls in, dick swinging, water droplets still shimmering on his shoulders in the light from the hallway behind him. He stops when he sees me sitting up.
“I thought you went back to sleep,” he says, lifting the blankets and sliding in on his side.
“Kinda hard when it sounds like you’re killing her,” I mutter.
“I wasn’t killing her,” Baron says, turning away and setting his glasses on the bedside table, which gives me a chance to swallow the pearls. “I was fucking her.”
“You tried to kill her like an hour ago,” I say. “You can see how I’d be on alert.”
“She’s fine,” he says, adjusting his pillow. “You can hear her crying, can’t you?”
He’s right. Mabel’s soft sobs echo in the bathroom, which means she’s alive.
“You can’t go off on her like that,” I say quietly. “What if I hadn’t been here?”
“I know,” he says, serious now. “I shouldn’t have done that. It won’t happen again.”
“What if it does?”
“It won’t,” he says firmly.
I turn to face him, resting my face on my hand and gazing into the mirror of my twin, visible in the dim light coming through the open bedroom door.
“Was it because it was her?” I ask.
“No,” Baron says, scowling. “You think I care about that dumb runaway?”
“I guess not.” I don’t correct him, tell him that she’s not a runaway. Maybe she is. Just because she has a sister, that doesn’t mean she didn’t run away.
“No one cares about her,” he says. “She was garbage, so we threw her out.”
He’s wrong about that. Olive loves her. Olive is waiting for her, even now.
“Did you really kill her?” I ask. “After I left. You didn’t let her go?”
“Of course I fucking killed her,” he snaps. “I tried, anyway.”
“Did you?” I ask. “I wouldn’t think any less of you if you let her go.
If maybe you didn’t really want to kill her, subconsciously.
Maybe, whatever you did, you didn’t do it as much or as hard as you thought.
If you hit her with a rock, maybe some part of you made you hold back. Maybe that’s why she wasn’t there.”
“Or maybe you and Mabel are fucking with me,” he says. “I don’t do shit halfway, and no part of me wanted to spare her. I’m not you, Duke. I don’t have some misplaced savior complex.”
“No lies?” I ask. “Promise?”
“I promise,” he grits out. “I killed her. If I didn’t, you can be damn sure it was a mistake. Now you. Did you fuck with her?”
“No,” I say. “No lies. I went back to get Mabel, and then we left the next morning. She was never out of our sight, either.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” he says, lifting his head and dropping it back onto the pillow, like he can’t get comfortable.
But I recognize the gesture of frustration.
I know all his tells, like he knows mine.
“Maybe an animal got her. That’s what I’m hoping.
Even if they couldn’t identify her, a body discovered in the woods would have made the news. If not… I fucked up, Duke.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” I say. “I’m sure something got her. A bear or a moose or something.”
“Moose are herbivores.”
“Okay, Olive,” I mutter.
She always knew random animal facts. Thinking about her annoys me, and I get up to go check on Mabel.
I wish I could get the kid out of my head, stop worrying that one day, I’ll have to tell her that her sister’s not coming home.
Of course I won’t, though. Even if I went home, she’d never want to see me again.
I bashed her head in on a chunk of cement last time I saw her.
In the bathroom, I find Mabel cleaning herself up, wincing and biting her lip so as not to cry out, her legs shaking and her eyes swimming with tears. I pick her up and carry her to bed, grabbing the ice pack on the way. She huddles against me, like she can’t bear to be near Baron right now.
“You want me to kiss it better?” I whisper, pressing my forehead to her damp, warm skin.
She shakes her head, a shudder rolling through her. “No.”
I would roll her over, but Baron likes her to be in the middle, between us. Since that day she tried to run, I’ve liked it too. He’ll wake up if she gets up and tries to slip out again.
But now, he’s satisfied, and after a few minutes, he stops moving, and I know from the rhythm of his breathing, as familiar as my own, that he’s asleep.
“I could make you feel better,” I tell Mabel, pushing my cock against her belly. She can feel that I’m hard. It’s impossible not to be with the girl I love lying naked in my arms.
“I’m too sore,” she murmurs.
“I could just lick you a little,” I say. “The way you taste… God, just feeling you cum on my tongue gets me off too.”
“Baron just came inside me.”
“Even better,” I say, pulling her leg over me and rocking against her. “I love it when I can taste my brother in your cunt.”
“You don’t have to always clean up his messes.”
“I’m not,” I protest. “I like it. And you’re not a mess. You’re my duchess.”
“And a mess,” she says, looking away.
I rumble a groan when I feel what she means—she’s getting wet, coating my shaft with her slickness.
“You’re my mess,” I say. “All juicy and full of cum. I love it.”
“And blood,” she mutters, hiding her face against my chest.
“You think a little blood bothers me? I fuck after Baron all the time, and if you aren’t dry enough for him to make you bleed, he doesn’t get off.”
“Don’t make excuses for him.”
“It’s not an excuse if it’s the truth,” I say, lifting her chin and leaning in, giving her a second to pull back if she wants.
When she doesn’t, I press my lips to hers, and the calm that only she brings settles over me, a feeling like going home.
Like I can stop striving for one goddamn minute and just breathe, just be.
I know I give her the same, and that’s why I’m here. Not because I match her brain like Baron does, but because I match her body.
“Wait,” she whispers, a tremor going through her. “You’re going to hurt me.”
“It’s okay,” I say, stroking the side of her bruised throat, where her pulse flutters under my fingertips. “I have something that’ll relax you. It won’t hurt at all.”
I give her a pill, and even though she doesn’t like them the way I do, she takes it. “What is it?”
“Don’t worry, baby,” I say. “Just swallow it. You won’t feel a thing.”
She hesitates only a moment, then takes the glass of water I offer and washes it down.
She’s out in minutes, the sedative doing its job.
I lay still until I can’t bear it a moment longer, feeling her warm, bare body against mine.
When she’s asleep, she doesn’t tighten up and cause herself more pain, and she doesn’t cum either. She hates when I make her do that.
I roll her over and fuck her as long as the Alice in my blood tells me to keep going.
I know she’ll be sore when she wakes up, but she’ll probably think it’s mostly from Baron’s roughness.
She doesn’t know I’m in Wonderland, and that I’ll be here for hours.
Even if I tell her, she won’t make a big deal out of it.
She’s given me permission before. She knows what she’s here for, and she’ll probably be grateful that I spared her the ordeal of being awake for it.
That’s the difference between me and Baron.
He gets off on her pain. I get off on her.
A few hours later, I’m sweating my way through the comedown when Baron gets up and goes out for his run.
Mabel’s still knocked out, so I slip from the bed and dress, considering whether to leave her like that.
I decide it’s too risky—Baron will be pissed to find her alone even if she’s asleep.
Instead, I cuff her and tie her to the bed.
Baron will like that. She’ll be all ready for him when he gets back.
Or maybe that Black Widow chick will find her like this.
Maybe I’ll come back and find her eating Mabel out, sucking my cum out of her, and she’ll be fingering herself and all wet and needy, and I’ll fuck her from the back, and Mabel will wake up and be pissed to see my dick in someone else, but she won’t be able to get away, and the Black Widow will force her to squirt while she cums all over my cock, screaming my name into Mabel’s wet pussy.
Or maybe I’ve been watching too much porn at work.
In the kitchen, Boots watches me warily, then lets out an evil hiss when I come near.
I hiss back at him, and he draws up, his eyes as round as saucers, looking gravely offended.
“Oh, get over it,” I mutter to him. “Your girl loves me.”
He arches his back, his orange fur standing on end when I walk past.
“Sucks to suck,” I tell him, opening the pantry.
I search for some gum to keep from grinding my teeth, but we must not have gotten any, and the thought of eating makes me retch.
I toss a few treats on the counter for Boots, not bothering to set him on the floor since he’s not supposed to get up on stuff.
I figure we should let the little guy live his life in peace, not try to teach him rules.
Humans already have way too many of those.