Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
Dalton
The house was locked up tight when we arrived, so I broke a window and let us in. It’s not as if we have to worry about the Oak Hollow PD. They were probably first to go once the Psycho Family Robinson got it in their heads that they needed to kill every townsperson.
While I’m curious to know more about these people and what their damage is, my top priority is finding Van Gogh and getting us the fuck out of here.
I’ve been doing my best to keep Rayna’s mind occupied so that she can’t think too long about how weird this place is, but if she starts thinking about it too much, we’ll never get out of here.
Not until she answers every question her brain can come up with.
We’re currently in Samuel’s bedroom. We already grabbed our things from the basement. Rayna wanted to dress, so I told her I’d wear my gym shorts in the event that one of us needed to strip quickly and scare off the weirdos.
God. I still can’t wrap my mind around calling someone else the weirdos.
“Have you checked the bookshelf?” I motion to a shelf littered with taxidermy manuals and anatomy tomes. “Samuel didn’t exactly strike me as the studious type. Maybe these are just for show?” I take a step toward the shelf, but the frustrated grunt from Rayna stops me.
“He’s not in here,” she says with a resigned sigh. She closes the lid of a trunk she’s been digging through, then flops onto her ass. “Where could he be if he’s not in this house? Where else can we look? We could be here for weeks.”
She looks so forlorn and small, and it’s killing me. I move toward the bed and sit on the edge of Samuel’s very firm mattress, where I pull Rayna from the floor and into my lap. She melts in my arms, her warm breath fanning against my neck as I hold her.
“We’ll find him. If I have to tie him down and force him to look at a Playboy to get the truth out of him, I’ll find your squirrel.” I kiss the top of her head. “It won’t take weeks, either. If we have to spend more than another day in this Dawn of the Dead remake, I’ll lose my shit.”
A door slams near the front of the house, and Rayna and I freeze.
The only hiding space is a tall wardrobe tucked in the corner.
There is no closet in sight, and the bed is practically touching the ground, so there’s no way we could cram ourselves underneath.
I push Rayna toward the wardrobe, shove her inside, and tuck myself beside her before closing the door.
Holding our breath, we peer through the slats as the bedroom door flies open.
Samuel pounds into the room, eyes narrowed, steam practically billowing from his ears.
His fists clench and unclench at his sides as he glances around the room—at the bed, at the trunk, at the wardrobe where we hide—before raring back and kicking the trunk at his feet. Wood splinters and litters the floor.
Rayna’s head slowly turns toward me, revealing her wide eyes. What the actual fuck? she mouths.
I turn back to the slats. Samuel has gone to the bookshelf now. He’s speaking to himself as he paces back and forth, running his big hands through his hair, but I can’t make out a word of what he says.
“Are they in there?” a man’s voice calls from the front of the house.
Samuel shakes his head. “No sign of them. I think they were here, though. Probably looking for that squirrel.”
Thank fuck I parked the truck in the forest at the head of the driveway. Rayna gives my hand a squeeze, likely thanking me for exactly that.
“Maybe they left town. You’ll need to get back out there and—”
“They haven’t left town,” Samuel says, just loud enough to silence the man. He steps toward the bookshelf and pulls out a thick copy of some ancient medical book, which he opens. Inside the book is a hollow depression, and inside the depression—
“Van Gogh,” Rayna whispers.
I wrap my arm around her shoulder and pull her against me.
I’m not trying to quiet her, though. She needs me right now, and I’m letting her know I’m with her in the only way I can.
Her shoulders tremble in my grasp, and as she tilts her head to the side, unable to witness the way Samuel handles her baby, a single tear falls onto my hand.
Rage coils under my skin. It winds into a tight ball, waiting for the moment when I release the tension and allow it to spring forth, unchained. Unrestrained. And I will release it. By making Rayna cry, they all but guaranteed it.
“They die today, bones,” I whisper in her ear. “All of them. Every one of them. They die today. For you.”
Her trembling stops, and even though another tear falls down her cheek, a smile breaks through.
“I’m going back to the main house to check on your mother and brother,” the man calls from the front of the house. “Will you be joining us for dinner, or would you prefer to remain here?”
“I’m coming with you, Pa!” Samuel shouts back as he wiggles Van Gogh. Then he tucks the squirrel into his back pocket and exits the room.
Rayna and I remain in the wardrobe until the crunch of tires on gravel fades to silence. We unfurl from the shadows and stand in the room, looking at the floor but seeing nothing.
I reach for her hand. “Come on, bones. Let’s follow them and use the element of surprise.”
She shakes her head and steps toward the bed. Her backpack slides off her shoulders and lands on the mattress. “No. The father said something about dinner, so I think we should wait until they’re seated at the table. At least make sure Van Gogh isn’t present before we attack.”
I see what she’s saying. If we spring a trap on them while they have Van Gogh in their possession, they will have the upper hand. We need to get him first.
“What should we do while we wait?” I ask. “We already fucked up their carousel.”
Rayna’s eyebrow rises as she sits on the bed and begins rifling through her bag. A mischievous smirk slides onto her face. “Step out of the room, and don’t come back in until I tell you to.”
An anticipatory sweat slicks my brow as I rise and exit the room. Rayna’s surprises are usually well beyond the scope of what people consider normal. Even people like me. The shock is a small price to pay for the fantasy she fulfills for us both.
A few minutes pass before she calls for me to enter. When I open the door, my jaw nearly hits the floor. She’s wearing the dreadful rat-thong bikini we purchased at the oddity shop.
“I am so fucking attracted to you, bones. You know that. But . . .” I search for the right words, but only one seems to do. “No.”
“No? What do you mean?” She turns and wiggles her hips, showcasing the scaly rat tail dangling between her full ass cheeks.
When she faces me again, I finally realize how the bottoms tie together.
The rat was skinned in a T pose, making it look like a rodent reenactment of the crucifixion across her pelvis.
White ribbons attach to the hands and feet, then connect at her hips.
The top isn’t much better. A rodent head glares at me from the apex of each furry triangle struggling to cover her full breasts.
And yet, despite the grotesque ensemble, despite the fact that I’ve already drained my balls within the last six hours, my cock begins to strain against the front of my gym shorts.
Rayna has twice the screws loose that I ever had.
In fact, since meeting her, she’s unscrewed a few extras from me.
I don’t particularly like rodents of any kind, but I do like Rayna.
Even as she sits on the edge of that small bed and pouts, the front of the taxidermy rat gives an obscured view of what I want, what I always want, even when it’s behind something so macabre.
So I do what any insane boyfriend does for his even more insane girlfriend.
My “no” becomes a “yes,” and I hurry to her and push her onto her back.
My lips trail down her neck and over her perfect breasts.
Fur tickles my nose, but I ignore it and pretend it’s anything other than what it is.
I inch down her body until I’m between her legs, and the undergarment is even more horrifying up close.
It’s not even good taxidermy. It’s a horror scene between her silky thighs.
“Couldn’t we take these off and—”
“No, Dalton! Just eat me out!”
The woman has spoken.
My finger strokes the brown brindled coat as I grip the crotch of her underwear and pull it aside.
The rat head flops to the side, its eyes meeting mine as I bring my chin to her slit.
Eating out Rayna to the glowering and judgmental stare of a dead rodent wasn’t on our adventure list, but I drop my gaze to what I really want and get to eating.
My tongue swipes her clit and electrifies her upper body.
Her back rises off the bed, and her hands disappear in my hair as I devour her until she’s screaming my name into the abyss.
Her hips move against me, grinding and circling as she chases her pleasure.
The corner of the bed knocks against the wardrobe, and it kicks open.
Clothes tumble from inside. I’ll have to clean that up later, once Rayna has finished soaking my face.
“I’m going to come, Dalton,” she pants as her spine curves and her abdomen draws tight. Her thighs shake against the sides of my head.
“Come, bones,” I growl against her slit.
And she does. She absolutely shatters the earth around us as she crests the most delicious peak I’ve created for her.
All I know is she soaks my chin with her pleasure, and I love how she tastes.
I climb up her body from between her legs and kiss her, letting her taste how sinfully delicious she is.
“You feeling a little better now?” I ask with a smirk.
She sighs against my lips and smiles up at me. “Yes. Now let’s go fuck some shit up and take back our son.”