Chapter 21 Kashton #2
It only takes seconds before my eyes get heavy and my body relaxes into the table. I hate the drugs. It feels like cheating. I’d rather kick and scream and make them fight me than succumb to drugs that pull me under and make me weak.
“I’m going to begin.”
I run my hand through my hair. This is why I choose to drink myself into a coma every night. To quiet the demons that remind me every day of who I once was.
How I had no say or control over my own body.
I’m not sure what it was she did. Everything was always foggy after that.
I would wake up in my room, hurting and sore for a few days.
My father would come in and force pain pills down my throat.
Just when I thought I was feeling like myself, the time would come to visit her again. It was an endless cycle.
If I were lucky, my addiction would have killed me, but that’s not possible.
Taking a swig, I gasp at the burn and rub away the alcohol that runs down my chin. I sit in the cemetery, like any other night, in front of the unmarked grave with a bottle of Jack in my hand. It’s cold outside. More so than it’s been.
I haven’t fallen into a black hole, but I’m teetering on the edge. The thought of diving off headfirst sounds good. Maybe the drop will kill me. But I’m never that lucky in life. Why would I be in a fictional scenario?
Tipping the bottle back again, I down what’s left of it and toss it aside.
I lie down on the uneven ground and close my heavy eyelids. I just want to sleep my life away. It’ll help pass the time.
The sound of branches has me jolting up. I slam my back into the unmarked headstone when I see someone step into the dim cemetery lighting.
“Goddammit, Kash,” I hiss when he makes himself comfortable against the same tree as the last time he followed me here.
“I went looking for you earlier.”
Even though it’s a cool night, he’s wearing a T-shirt and jeans with a backward baseball hat. He drops a black duffel bag by his feet, and it instantly makes me nervous. Mainly because I don’t have mine with me this time. I’ve let my guard down and allowed him to fuck me twice now.
“Don’t you have a life?”
“I’m looking at it,” he answers, eyes on mine.
I glance away, ignoring the butterflies in my stomach when he comes around.
Instead, I get to my feet, brush off my jeans, and slap my hands together to dust off the dirt.
“Go home, Kash. Quit following me.” I give him my back and start walking through the cemetery, deeper into the woods.
I need to clear my head, and I don’t have my bag on me, so I don’t have any drugs to knock him out with.
“I’m bored.”
His choice of words stops me. A cold chill makes the hairs on the back of my neck rise. Adam said he’d be bored. That I needed to be careful. Is this a coincidence?
The sound of the branches breaking under his boots swirls around the abandoned cemetery with the wind, but I stay grounded where I’m at. It gets louder before it comes to a stop, and I can feel the heat from his body on my back.
“I want to play with you,” he declares, making me shiver. His hands tangle in my wind-blown hair as he gathers it from around my shoulders and holds it captive at the nape of my neck. “Will you play with me?”
I’ve never had any friends to play with.
Swallowing nervously, I keep my back to him and ask. My curiosity is getting the best of me. “What do you have in mind?”
“Hide-and-seek,” he suggests, and it makes me smile.
I turn around, my hair sliding through his fingers, to glance up at him. “Hide-and-seek?” I arch a brow.
“What?”
I reach out, resting my hands on his hard chest. I can feel his heart beating slow and steady under the thin material of his shirt. “That…sounds a little below you. Childish.”
The corner of his lips twitch. “I have an adult version in mind.”
The smile drops off my face, and I whisper, “Meaning?”
“You hide, but when I find you, you belong to me.”
My stomach twists, but wetness drips from my pussy.
Belong to Kashton Landon Pierce? Never in my wildest dreams did I think that’d be an option.
But as he stands here in the flesh, the thought doesn’t sound so bad.
Dropping my hands, I take a step back from him.
“What are you going to do, brand me or something?” I give a rough laugh to try and play off the fact that my pulse is racing.
He runs his tatted knuckles over my collarbone before wrapping his hand around my throat. I don’t fight him when he steps into me. “Once I find you, you’ll be mine to play with for the next forty-eight hours.”
Disappointment washes over me. I thought he wanted me forever, but I push it out of my mind. Maybe it’s the bottle of liquor I downed making me crazy.
He’s a man—the thing I hate most in the world. Since when do I want to let any man play with me? “I’m not interested in being your toy, Kashton,” I decide to say.
His hand tightens a little more, but still not to the point of cutting off my air. “You can lie to yourself, angel, but you can’t lie to me. I know what you want.”
Oh really? “What is that?” This will be good.
“Someone to control you.” He tilts his head to the side and my heart leaps in my chest. “You need a man to tell you what to do and how to do it.”
My eyes narrow up at him because his words have my body humming with need. I’ve done so good for years, and he wrecks it within a week. I let him fuck me twice, and all of a sudden, my body wants him. It’s like having a first hit and always chasing that same high.
He gives my throat a warning squeeze, as if to shut my mind up and place my attention back on him.
“I’ll control when you eat and when you sleep.” His hand pulls me closer to his body, and I have to arch to keep eye contact. I grip the soft material of his shirt as he continues. “How you’re fucked and when you can come.”
I swallow, and it grants me a devious smirk; he knows his words are getting to me.
“I bet you’re wet right now just thinking about it.”
I lick my lips.
“It’s okay to want to be my whore, Eve.” He frowns as if he can’t fathom why I wouldn’t want to be a toy for him. “There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be used.”
But there is. It’s not who I’ve worked so hard to be. “Go to hell,” I tell him.
His frown deepens at my rejection. “It’ll just be me and you, Eve.”
My knees threaten to buckle. Does he know about my past? That I’ve been used and passed around? I’ve never had someone who only wanted me to themselves. I’ve never been enough.
“No one watching. Just us.”
What’s one more time? We’ve already been here twice. Even though I hated myself afterward, it felt good in the moment.
“Okay.” The single word slips from my trembling lips before my mind can even process what I said.
My body wants him. Even now, it’s leaning into him.
I’m having an internal battle, wanting to slam a knife into his chest as badly as I want to fall to my knees to let him fuck my face however he likes.
My mind knows right from wrong, but my body…she’s only ever known what he described.
“Okay what, angel? You’re going to have to tell me what you want.”
I glance up at him through my lashes, taking in a shaky breath. “I’ll play hide-and-seek. If you find me, I’ll be yours for forty-eight hours.”
“When I find you,” he corrects me.
“What do I get if you don’t?” The thought of him not finding me is what scares me. What if this is a trick? What if he wants to see me hide and he doesn’t even come after me? A way to set me up. To see how desperate I am.
He removes his hand from my neck, and I shiver from the coldness. Kashton chuckles at my question and glances at his watch. “You’ve got sixty seconds and then I’m coming to get you.”
“I can’t get very far in sixty seconds.” I smile playfully. My adrenaline is already pumping. He was right the last time we stood here in the cemetery, when he said saving me from the guy on the Isabella turned me on.
He was there when I needed him, and he’s the first guy to never disappoint me. So far.
“This isn’t about running, Eve. It’s about hiding,” he clarifies. “And you’re wasting valuable time. Run and hide.”
I turn around and rush through the cemetery, stepping on old graves and dodging unmarked headstones in my chunky boots. There’s a mausoleum in the far back that I can hide inside of.
Looking over my shoulder, I no longer see him and smile at myself. The old concrete structure comes into view, and I take a sharp right. Walking up the two steps, I push open one of the heavy doors and step inside.
Pressing my back against it, I blink, giving my eyes a second to adjust while I catch my breath. Drinking and running are not two things I suggest be done together.
It has three stained-glass windows that run across the top of the opposite end, but they don’t allow much light to filter in.
Especially on a night like tonight. The lingering musty smell has me turning up my nose.
You can hear the wind outside. It’s so strong it makes the tree limbs rustle against the side of the building.
Pulling my cell out of my back pocket, I turn on the flashlight to see better.
It’s on the smaller side. Built from nothing other than concrete. Both the right and left walls contain past Lords concealed in their tombs. Each side is stacked four high and three deep.
There’s a small bench in the center of the room so you can sit and pay your respects or cry for the Lord who’s been tucked away from the world they betrayed.
There are dirt and dead leaves all over the floor. My boots crunch them as I walk to the back. Two concrete pillars stand tall on either side, and two more Lords lie between them in concrete tomb-like structures.
They must be really important. Lords are allowed to be buried wherever they want—with their families.
It’s the ones who betray their oaths that are brought and dumped here in the cemetery behind the cathedral.
So for these Lords to have been placed in the mausoleum—a private burial within concrete—means they were very respected.
Founders, maybe? Even those, I’ve known to be burned and tossed away with the wind if they’ve fucked over the society.
Stepping up on the platform, I run my hand over the dirt-covered crypts. There are no names carved that I can see, just bodies forgotten and left to rot.
This will be me one day. Once I’m gone, no one will come and visit me. I’m not mad about it. I’ve just learned it’s the way of life. No one cares about you when you’re alive or when you’re dead.
It makes me think of the woman I found in the cemetery. Left to rot all alone after she spent God knows how long being tortured. Her family deserved to know what happened to her. She deserved to rest in peace.
The sound of the doors opening behind me is a reminder that I was supposed to be hiding. But deep down, I really want to be found. I’ve spent so many years alone; what’s forty-eight hours belonging to someone? Even if it is just as a toy for him to play with.
The liquor has my blood warming, and the thought of Kashton fucking me has my pussy clenching. It’s going to be a good night after all.
“Found you, angel. Know what that means?”
I hide my smile before I turn around to face him, shining my flashlight in order to see.
He’s standing in front of the closed doors, his tatted arms crossed over his chest and his duffel bag on the dirty concrete floor at his combat boots.
His hat is still on and turned backward.
His chiseled jaw and pretty blue eyes make me weak in the knees.
My flashlight makes him look evil and hauntingly devilish. Like a god coming to take me away. But I’m not going to heaven. None of us do in our world. It’s a one-way trip to hell.
My eyes meet his when I say, “I’m all yours for the next forty-eight hours.” I’ve tried to kill myself twice. I might as well live my life while I’m alive.