Chapter 3 Kali #2
And the best part? There was no guaranteed antidote. A high enough dosage could end anyone’s life.
Pulling on my gloves, I carefully plucked it out of the earth, checking that I had the whole plant, from the roots to the blossoms. The sheet of blank paper I’d stolen from work crinkled as I wrapped the flower in it.
This plant would retain its poisonous capabilities in a dried state as well as freshly uprooted.
I hid the package in my pocket, patted the fabric of my pants to hide any outlines, and headed right for my usual spot in the middle of the circular field, instinctively scanning the tree line.
But my hunt turned fruitless, and I sprawled out in the grass, switching my focus to the sky full of shimmering stars.
They flickered on and off, resembling a battle in full force. And I knew the side that would win would be the one that had coerced me into selling out the single person I’d ever loved.
Unrest tickled the back of my memory, reminding me of how the gods twinkling in the sky had ignored my pleas and forced me to hurt Alora. To damn her to become a shell of life. Alive yet more dead than a single withered blade of grass poking me in my bare ankle.
The nightmare haunting me was supposed to stay behind the Ilasall’s wall, not cling to me like a shadow.
It’s all going to be okay. We’ll be okay, I’d promised Alora.
The lie I’d told her rippled through me, and I screamed. I screamed at the promise I’d made to her, to us, to our futures.
Sitting up, I grasped fistfuls of grass. My fury grew at the slick dew harboring it from my rage. I ripped it out with another scream, and another, and another, until my fists escaped my will and flexed with a painful contortion.
I screamed again and again, at everything. At my own actions, at Alora’s fate, at Ilasall, at the life waiting for me. At the world.
But my outburst didn’t bring me the escape I desired. I cursed the night sky with another scream at those stars, those gods mocking me by withholding any flicker of tranquility.
Suddenly, a familiar sensation prickled my back.
My neck twisted toward it so fast my nerves shrieked.
I yanked on the familiar tether, as invisible as it was, but the feeling was sufficient to spot him leaning against a trunk of a tree on the border of the clearing, his arms folded over his chest covered by a black t-shirt and a matching jacket.
Pants and boots were black too, the outfit blending him with the night.
He stood thirty yards away, yet concern oozed from him, slithering down the ground toward me, weaving between the blades of grass, joining the probing gusts of wind.
I didn’t want his worry anywhere near me.
But here he was, pretending to be able to wield the night and manipulate nature into placating me.
I knew this wasn’t real, that my senses had gone haywire. But whenever I saw him, my stupid head couldn’t cease summoning visuals of the gloom swirling around him. Perhaps it was the way he held himself, how he owned the space, and how it carried a certain heaviness, as far from light as possible.
I couldn’t ignore the shadows trailing over his shoulders, even if they were only a figment of my rampant imagination.
But if he thought what I needed was an embrace, I could show him a glimpse of the vicious hail, the bellowing storm inside me.
Seething with all my existence, I leaped up and stomped toward him. Fear hadn’t found its home in me, not like in the gods twinkling in the sky, their light halting before him as they refused to cast their silvery shimmers on him.
“Who are you?” I snarled, my nostrils flaring. My nails poked my palms, and I imagined my fists transforming into a set of claws. “Why are you here?” I shouted.
He didn’t say anything, didn’t move an inch.
I lunged and threw my fist right toward his sharp jaw to wipe that amusement off. He spun to my left, affecting my aim, and my punch landed on his chest.
Not the faintest flinch rocked through him.
An offer. An invitation.
I barreled hits into his chest with booming thumps, yelling, “What do you want?”
His rigid body absorbed my strikes without a stumble, and he moved to my left again, coaxing me along.
“Why do you keep following me, watching me?”
His lack of reaction inspired my fist to target that damned jaw again. He grabbed my wrist mid-air, and I momentarily lost my balance as my imaginary claws retracted back into my flesh and my hands became mine once more.
My pulse thrummed so feverishly he probably felt it, but I lifted my chin higher in search of the answer to my own challenge.
I couldn’t find it.
Darkness clouded his face. He had slowly turned his back to the clearing while I was beating him. Starlight glowed around the edges of his body, his front plunged into the night.
“Let. Me. Go,” I said blandly, and to emphasize my demand, I harshly yanked my wrist.
He released me, and I staggered from the surprise, hissing as I collided with a tree. My thin cotton t-shirt did nothing to alleviate the rough tree bark abrading my back from the impact.
I hadn’t expected him to do what I’d asked. No one ever did.
His fist thumping on the trunk above my head wrenched a gasp out of me. My feet rooted themselves to the forest floor, and a tiny, withered twig crunched under my sneakers.
Warm breath rained below my ear. “All alone deep in the forest.” His low growl curled my toes. “Someone might just snatch you away.”
I rubbed my clammy palms on the loose black pants I’d put on before leaving my apartment. Only the slickness hadn’t originated from fear. His musing had painted a fantasy that hitched my breathing.
“I will chop their heads off if they so much as try.” I shoved at his wide chest.
“What if that is exactly what they want?” A guttural hum vibrated under my palms as he nuzzled my neck. “For you to fight, flee, and be caught?”
My pulse roared in my ears despite my dry mouth. An onslaught of tingles spread along my limbs, contrary to the thorns of disgust jabbing my nerves when I doled out my favors, whether to one person or four at once, depending on what I’d purchased and from whom.
“Then I will enjoy licking their blood off my teeth after I rip their throats out,” I spat out, acting as if his nose skimming the column of my neck had no effect on me. His barely-there touches had lit my skin on fire.
“So feisty.” He kissed behind my ear, an inch lower, another inch, an increment of it, and sunk his teeth right underneath my jaw.
I jerked from the shock.
As he continued down to my shoulder, the blooming pain rushed straight between my legs, the ache melting into the need for more, and my thighs clenched.
An instinct to be still and not resist had ingrained itself deep inside me. Some liked a fight, and I loathed how that would drag out the payment transfer—if you could call it that.
Yet the person I had named my shadow…
I didn’t want him to stop, however messed up this was.
Although he was nibbling on my flesh, it hadn’t awakened any panic or instilled revulsion in me. His bites hadn’t rung any alarm bells. At all.
What they had done was shrink the forest to the sensation of him so close to me.
He toyed with the hem of my t-shirt, exposing my belly to the late summer’s chill, and I yelped from his cold skin grazing mine.
“Get off of me.” Finally, some sense had knocked into my awareness. I twisted to the side to duck away from him, and his thumb dug into my stomach, locking me against the cracked bark of whatever tree was behind me and stealing the air from my lungs.
“Not until I have marked you.” He licked the hollow of my throat and nipped at my neck. “Tasted you.”
Lifting my t-shirt up, he tugged the thin bra I was wearing down, exposing my breasts, and pinched my hardened nipple, twisting and pulling.
My back arched, and I fisted the cool material of his worn leather jacket, silently begging for more.
Because his touch burned, it burned to the depths of my core; it pushed my nightmare away by erecting a wall of flames around me.
His hands weren’t like those I bargained with—a favor for a favor; no, they felt…safe. As safe as his gaze when he’d watch me from afar. When I’d dream of him coming closer.
“Claimed you.” He hooked the hem of my pants and dipped into my underwear, spreading me apart, and half-hummed, half-chuckled. “You’re wet.”
“I am not,” I scoffed.
But he was right. Those bites of his had done it.
He settled on slow, teasing circles around my clit that called out the first trembles in my legs.
“I punish liars.” Roughly plunging a finger into me, he grunted as I clenched around him, then began pumping in and out.
“But tonight, I will let you off. I will make you come so hard you will dream about me this night and the rest to come.”
The heel of his palm came into contact with my clit, and he quickly figured out a rhythm that made me clutch his jacket so tightly my muscles went numb.
He added a second finger, and I parted my legs, leaning into him, grinding on his hand, not caring that he was an outsider anymore. I needed a release. A moment of oblivion. A second of the all-consuming blaze to take me away from this world.
A third finger joined the other two, curling together with his thrusts and pressing against my inner wall. My knees buckled.
He caught my waist and pinned me to the tree, holding me up. His bruising grasp pushed me right to the edge, and I swayed over the abyss, about to fall, right there, right there, right th—
“Come for me,” he ordered. “Now.”
His icy tone broke me right down the middle.
My mouth opened in a soundless gasp as the world dissolved and pulses of pure pleasure surged through me.
He sought out each wave, prolonging them to the point I squirmed, unable to take more.
Legs quivering, I panted, with my forehead resting on his shoulder.
“So beautiful,” he murmured into my ear.
A sudden flash of realization plucked me out of the haze of pleasure. I was outside the city, in the middle of the forest, and the man who’d stalked me the past two months had his fingers still inside me. My tongue swollen, I released my hold of his jacket and bit back a cry as he pulled away.
He leaned against a nearby tree, a knee bent and foot resting on the trunk, inspecting his three digits glistening with my arousal and cum.
Marveling at the wetness, like a hunter who’d finally caught his prey, he leisurely drew them to his mouth, licked a pad of his forefinger, and swiftly clamped down around them all.
I gaped at him with my mouth hanging open. A man, a stranger, had made me come and now was sucking himself clean of me, relishing my flavor like he couldn’t get enough.
This could not actually be happening.
But my sore pussy and the ache in my neck from the definite bruises he’d left stated otherwise.
Finished, he stuffed his hands into his pockets, his smirk visible even in the darkness. Staring at him, I gulped. The storm inside me had calmed, but my mind was blank. Utter mush.
I didn’t know how long I stood before him, transfixed, but enough was enough. I whirled around and sprinted across the clearing to the other side, toward the city, away from him.
Away from who my body had melted for.