CHAPTER NINE
HELIA
They called me Little Alice and I loved it.
I also knew I was in over my head by a long way.
The twins followed me everywhere. Even when they thought they couldn’t see me, or I thought I was alone, I’d turn a corner and one of them would be there, waiting to shadow me to class.
Not that we had a normal relationship, like holding hands and being romantic—because why would we do that when they killed a man just to date me?
Taco Tuesday was officially a bust and Angelica faded back into her own routine of no people and her own life of study. I couldn't draw her out of it, and so I merged my life with the twins. Because they were there? Maybe. Because I owned them? Absolutely.
Should the murder have bothered me more?
I mean, I came from a family that revolved around underhand bargains struck at tables across the country.
I still wasn't sure what my father wanted the night he called but I was glad that insanity had passed. The twins weren’t really a stretch from that place in my life.
Hell, if I introduced them to Dad, he’d probably approve of them—if he knew what they did, and how well.
“This isn’t the best place to accost me, you know,” I protested, as Kash gripped my elbow through my faded denim jacket.
I’d worn it over my black singlet t-shirt dress today with lace straps as it looked like rain earlier, but I hadn't been outside in hours, hoping from art history class to a digital and new media lecture that I’d thought I would hate at the beginning of semester but ended up loving.
They’d left me alone for the better part of today, and I should have known better than to expect solitude altogether.
“I do get to have days to myself, you know–oh, fuck,” I cursed as Kash dragged me from the building into the pelting rain without a second’s hesitation. “IO could have art that’s getting damaged, you know!”
He cast me a quick, hard look over his shoulder that pierced right through me.
“So, run.”
I took the hint as he gripped my hand firmly—there’s that stupid, romantic notion again—and darted after him, gripping the strap on my shoulder satchel as hard as I could as I put my head down, trusted that he knew where he was going, and blindly ran.
By the time that we reached our destination.
I swore that he had picked the longest route possible, halfway across campus through the rain instead of dashing from building to building to seek shelter.
I stared at the almost skeletal looking man before me.
Pale, pigmentless hair plastered to his head, and pinkish eyes stared at me from an angular face.
His white shirt clung to every plane of his hard body, and there were plenty of those.
Kash stalked toward me, breathing hard as he backed me toward a sandstone alcove.
“Where are we?” I asked as a distraction.
The clock above me in its tower struck the hour, dead on time in its answer, drowning out my next words, and any of his, though as usual the twin before me wasn’t terribly talkative.
His hand rose to catch my jaw in hard grip, and then his mouth crashed down on mine.
I whispered, straining up to meet him, seeking warmth in his kiss even as I pulled back, pressing away from him, deeper into the sandstone.
His laugh against my mouth was broken as he caged me in and leaned his cold, wet body against mine.
Damp clothes tangled as he itched my dress up, and pressed a knee between my legs.
Material wrapped around limbs where it shouldn’t be, trapping me in place. I struggled when he shoved my jacket over my shoulders, punning my arms by my sides.
“This isn’t fair,” I managed. “You’re far too organised for me.”
The flicker of metal and dull light together glinted, and my scream jammed in my throat as his blade pressed between my breasts.
Kash watched my face carefully. “Key promises me that you’re made for us, little Alice. That you understand why we stole lives for you. Do you?” he waggled the blade across the tops of my breasts, until I moaned for him.
“That— that—” I managed as the flat of the blade produced sensations over my skin that I’d never felt before. I sighed, and leaned into him, letting the blade dig in. “It’s good.”
"Isn't it?” he agreed, humming softly, low in his throat. The blade flicked to the sides, once, then twice. And my wet dress fell away, exposing my breasts.
I should have been shocked or cried out, but I arched instead, wanting his hands on me, knowing his touch would be freezing after our run through the rain.
“Please,” I begged, and I swore his eyes narrowed.
Kash turned away, gripping my hand and tossed me away from the wall, toward a set of stairs. I climbed them behind him, my dress clutched in one hand, my other laced in his, though I didn’t dare cover up. When we reached the top landing, I found myself in an open plan bedroom, split in two sides.
Two identities.
One covered in books, the other in computer equipment.
“You live behind the clock, don’t you?” I clutched my ruined dress and Kash’s hand, unwilling to let either go.
And in one cover, sat the smudged board that I had left in David Magnus’s studio that he promised to hide behind the rest of his old student’s works and leave to dust and obscurity.
“You saved it,” I whispered in awe.
“I saved it.”
Key stepped out of the shadows behind us, and pushed the door shut. It slammed, its echo filtering down the endless stairwell.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
Key’s sharp gaze drifted between his twin’s hand and my sliced duress, then nodded. “It’s only us.”
I sucked in a splintered breath, and looked up at Kash to find an identical hungry look on his angular, striking face.
“Let us see you, Helia,” he murmured. One hand drifted up to graze the side of my breast.
Pleasure ricocheted through me, and between my legs heated, slicking. I knew if they touched me there, they know.
“Why me?” I asked, knotting my dress between my breasts. Knowing they could see everything, letting them drink in everything.
Key focused on my face. “Because you see the world with a clarity others lack. In your art, in how you talk to people.”
I remembered my conversation with my father. “If you asked my dad, you might change your opinion of me,” I muttered, pulling my dress up, suddenly feeling unworthy of his assessment.
Kash’s grip at my waist yanked me into him.
My dress tugged away to pool at his fingers, and then there was no recovering it.
“I’ll tell you a story about my father, wraith.
” His mouth brushed over mine. “When I was a child he used to rape me. He used to abuse me and use me nightly. Do you know what I did to him?”
I held his gaze because I knew he needed it. “You killed him.”
“I killed him.” He licked the corners of my lips as his fingers glided to my nipples, toying with them. I arched backward and butted my head into Key’s shoulder. A cry tore from me, and he admonished me.
“Shh. Listen, Little Alice. Hear my brother."
Kash stroked my breasts, tracing along the undersides as I sighed and panted for him.
“I learned the value of taking a life, and the pleasure it gave me. What I could do for those I love. I learned how to protect the woman that I love.” He put his hand into his back pocket as Key growled, and I had the impression that he didn’t approve of this next part.
But Kash did it anyway, placing a stack of photos into my hands.
I flicked through, unsure what I looked at, then back at them both.
“These are from your art buddy’s room. He thought that taking pictures of you then jerking off over them would be good fun,” Key murmured in my ear as he toyed with my breasts. One hand curled around my throat and she squeezed rhythmically. “Would you approve?”
I stared at the pictures of me naked, in my bed, in my shower. In my home.
And I knew the answer.
“Only if it was you.” I twisted to stare at him, then at Kash. “Or you.”
The sounds they made, as contemplated Ethan’s absence, and what that meant, were primal and perfect. Their bodies rubbed against mine as mouths descended on mine, my lips, my throat, my breasts, licking and sucking and invading.
“On the bed.”
The order came from someone, and they lifted me. I found myself stretched across a wide bed, my legs pressed together as one twin positioned himself behind me, working his cock into my closed pussy. I moaned at the sensation, though the arm that banded around my stomach left me hot and flushed.
“Little Alice likes being held down,” Key murmured—from behind me, I realised.,.
“Not half as much as she likes being fucked when she’s asleep.” This from Kash.
It took a full minute for those words to penetrate my sex hazed mind as Key shoved his cock inside my drenched pussy. He groaned at the same time as I screeched, “What?”
Key’s laugh as he lay behind me on his side, with me completely impaled on his cock, might have been the most erotic thing I’d ever done.
Until his hand wrapped around my throat a second time—gently this time— as he leaned in.
“Lie still, like a doll, and we’ll show you what we like to do to you while you sleep, Helia.
Once we fucked you. Sometimes we just come on you.
And other times, we come in your mouth. You’re so stunning and soft and responsive in your sleep.
” His cock kicked in my pussy and I moaned.
Kash pulled aside the rest of my dress and latched his mouth over my clit, sucking and licking like he was Frenching my mouth, only he wasn’t….and it was my pussy instead.
I came almost instantly, milking Key’s cock to the music of his groans.
“Fuck, yes. Just like that, doll. You’re perfect,” he praised me. “In your sleep you come easily too. One day we’ll video you so you can see the things we do to you.”
I choked behind his hand as Kash continued his teasing kisses on my pussy. “Should he stop,” I managed to gasp in enough breath, rocking my hips to and from twin to twin.
“Ohh, fuck,” Key muttered as I rocked on him. “Wraith, we can't have that. So either you crash his face and he still licks you, or you hold still while he makes you orgasm and he drives himself to you today. And me? I’m going to stretch this pretty cunt and cum inside you soon.”
I whimpered and forced myself to hold still, raking my fingers along Key’s thigh as I came again for cock and tongue.
And neither of them seemed to mind.