twenty-two
Mabel Darling
“I still don’t get why we had to leave early,” Duke grumbles, tossing his stuff in the closet without unpacking. “No one suspects anything. You said you got rid of the body.”
“I did,” I say. I’ve come to understand that Duke wants the same things that I do, though, so I go to him.
He perches on the edge of the bed, raking a hand through his hair, showing signs of distress.
My mind flips through its encyclopedia to find the answer, the reaction that people want in his state. When I find it, I am calm.
“Hey,” I say, lifting his arm and pulling it around me. I slide onto his lap and cradle his cheek. “We can go back. Anytime we want, we can go back.”
“Then why aren’t we there?”
“I understand why you’re upset. I know your friends are there. But we’ll be back in a month for Labor Day. We just had to leave town until things cooled down. Just in case.”
He turns his face away. “You don’t understand. You don’t have friends, and Baron only has friends for show. He doesn’t actually give a fuck about anyone outside our family.”
“And you don’t think that bothers me?” I ask quietly, his harsh words smarting like a slap.
Duke looks up at me at last. “Does it?”
“Everyone wants to be loved,” I say, looking away. “To be accepted into a social group of their peers, even if they’re different. Evolutionally, if you were too much of a freak, too crazy, you’d be cast from the safety of the herd, and then you’d die.”
“Am I too weak for you and Baron’s social group?” he asks. “Are you going to cast me out?”
“No,” I say, turning his face to me. “You are the center, the heart.”
I lean in and kiss him, and he finally wraps his arms around me.
“But Baron’s the leader,” he says. “The king. You’re the queen. So what am I?”
“You’re the duke,” I say, smiling.
“Yeah, and what good is that? You don’t need me. Baron can do everything I can.”
“Not everything.”
“What, make you cum?” he asks. “He can do that. He just chooses not to. If he wanted, he could make you think he was me, and you’d never know the difference.”
“Eventually, I’d know,” I say. “He couldn’t keep it up forever.”
“I bet he could.”
I shake my head slowly. “No. Maybe the opposite. You could play him for longer by turning off your emotion and pretending you’re as emotionless as he is. But the one thing he can’t do is feel.”
“He could pretend to feel.”
“He does,” I point out. “But something is missing, and without you, he wouldn’t really know how to fake it. Not for long. He looks to you for that. For how to be human.”
“A king doesn’t need to be human,” he says. “What’s that ever gotten anyone?”
“Belonging,” I say. “Membership in the pack.”
“That’s not enough. A king has to be the best. And everyone else needs to be useful, productive. I’m nothing but extra weight for you and him. What does a duke even do?”
I glance at the door to make sure we’re still alone. “He rules once the king is gone.”
Duke stares at me a long second. “What are you saying?”
“What are you saying?” I ask carefully.
“I’m not saying anything,” he says, scowling at me. “Are you trying to trap me? Because it won’t work. I’m not as dumb as you think.”
“I know you’re not dumb,” I say. “I never thought that. I think you’re a lot smarter than people give you credit for. Just as smart as Baron. You just use it in a different way than he does.”
“What’s your angle?” he asks, narrowing his eyes. “No one thinks that.”
“I think you know people, and you use that to your advantage.”
He scoffs. “And how do you imagine I’m doing that? When have I ever had an advantage?”
“You’re sitting here pouting, saying you didn’t get your way,” I point out.
“Except you did. You got us to go back to Faulkner. You got Baron to make amends with Royal, and if I had my guess, you got Royal and Harper to accept whatever meager apology he might have made. You think they did that for him?”
“And you’re doing… What? Calling my bluff?”
“No,” I say. “I know how important it is for you to be able to go home too. I’m just saying, I never count you out, Duke. I don’t think you should, either.”
I stand to leave, but he snags my hand. “No,” he says. “Get on the bed.”
There’s something mean in him, a hard glint in his eyes, and I wonder not for the first time if I’ll ever really know when they play each other’s part.
I swallow hard, then force myself to obey.
“Go on,” he says, nodding to my legs. “Take those off.”
“I haven’t showered,” I say, though I know that won’t deter him. “We were in the car all day.”
He doesn’t even answer. I steel myself and obey, quickly shedding my clothes. He smiles, pleased with my compliance. Then he scoots back, unzips, and pulls out his cock. He lays there stroking it, watching me, one arm tucked behind his head.
“What are you waiting for?” he asks, dragging his fist up his shaft to the tip. “Come get me wet. Unless you want me to go in dry. Since I’m so much like Baron.”
“I didn’t say that,” I say faintly. “I said you were just as smart.”
“Smart enough to know you hate it more when it doesn’t hurt,” he says. “So get up here and slobber on my cock until it can slide right in. In fact, you can sit on my face while you do it. That’ll guarantee you feel good.”
I hesitate, then climb onto the bed. He drags my hips up, turning me around and pulling me down on his face. His mouth is hot and hungry, and a shiver of pleasure rolls through me. I hate it.
I quickly lean over, taking him into my mouth.
I hate doing this too. But at least it distracts me from the relentless stroke and thrust of his tongue, so I can almost pretend he’s not there, not touching me.
I grip his shaft and take him deep into my mouth, sucking at his soft skin, the hard ridges of muscle beneath.
“That’s it,” he says. “Suck me off just like your brother. He likes to choke on it, so don’t be afraid to go a little deeper and gag.”
I try to ignore his words, but I can’t help but remember hearing that rumor. When I went back for my senior year, I was hooked. They’d made me fall for them, and I was so na?ve that when they ghosted me, and I was devastated. I wanted them back. I wanted more.
But it was Colt they targeted first. They didn’t hide it like my family would have.
They had no shame, would go around yelling out that they were going to take him back to the basement, that he looked good on his knees.
He was the only one who was shamed for it at school.
Laughed at and taunted and ostracized even more than he had been the year before.
And still, I wanted them, sick as it all was. I felt like I’d die if I couldn’t impress them, if I couldn’t show them that that I was more than nothing, that I wasn’t some trash they could use and discard. That I wasn’t an unlovable freak.
I almost did die proving it.
They won’t forget it again.
They won’t, and my grandfather won’t, and Mr. Harris won’t.
Their father won’t, either. He’s gone too. I only wish I’d gotten to be there when he went, that I’d gotten to order his execution.
He might have violated me, but I could have kept it secret, and no one would have known, if not for Dixie.
She was so infuriated that Colt wouldn’t turn his back on me, even when I was too entangled with the Dolces to get out.
My brother stood up for me, and they burned his arm while I screamed for them to let him go.
Not until I agreed to be their slave, they said.
He said no. He told me not to agree to that. So they tortured him with a blowtorch until his eyes went glassy with pain, until he went into shock. Until I screamed for them to do anything they wanted to me, until I agreed to it, if they would please just let him go.
Dixie was furious. They had scarred her pretty boyfriend.
So when they did what they wanted, when they took turns with me and left me tied to the bed, when they went off laughing to have a smoke break, it wasn’t enough for her.
When their father found me there, and I screamed for them to help me, and they didn’t come back, and he did what he wanted too, it wasn’t enough.
When they recorded it to humiliate or blackmail me, because that family loves their cameras, it still wasn’t enough.
She had to post the video on her blog, so everyone at school knew my shame too.
So they loathed me with the loathing reserved for the kind of woman who lets men use her one after another, but never for the men who do the using.
“Get on my dick,” Duke says, shoving my hips down.
I slide down the bed and position his slick tip at my entrance, then sink onto him.
Ripples of pleasure shiver through me, and I try to ignore them, but I can’t anymore.
Not when he lifts his hips and pushes all the way in, so deep it hurts.
That always snaps me back into my body, where I can’t escape.
“Ride me,” he commands.
Placing my hands on his knees for balance, I lift up, then sink back down on his shaft.
It stretches me, fills me. He grips my hips, massaging my flesh, spreading me so he can see everything.
He fucks up into me, and I whimper helplessly.
Pain and pleasure twist together, undistinguishable from each other and equally unwelcome.
“Turn around,” he says. “I want to watch your face while I make you cum.”
I start to climb off, but he stops me. “Spin on it, baby.”
I slowly turn my body, clambering awkwardly around his legs, his body, until I’m straddling him. The sensation of his cock pressing against each wall as I turn distracts me from being self- conscious about my clumsiness, my unsexy body, my scars. Then I’m facing him.
“Duchess,” he says, smiling up at me.
“Duke.”
“Maybe.”
I swallow hard. “You’re not Duke?”
“I could be Duke.”
“You could be Baron.”
“Does it matter?”
I hesitate a long moment, then shake my head. “No. I guess not.”
“Do you love me?”
“Yes.”
“More than you ever loved your grandpa?”
I shiver. “Yes.”
“More than you love Colt?”
“Yes.”