CHAPTER 2 ELODIE
ELODIE
“What you gonna do with her?”
“Fuck knows. Her dad was useless in giving me any tips. Says she only works and that’s it.”
“Well, I’m sure you’ll find some use for her, if the rumours are to be true. Some wet, warm use. Plus, if she’s crazy, you two will get along great, aye, Alf?”
“I don’t need crazy. I need someone to keep me grounded.”
There are a million voices around me. My senses are awake enough to warn me not to move. To try to filter through these voices and identify them. I am also acutely aware of how unbelievably soft the thing I’m lying on is. It’s not stone, cobble, brick. It’s a bed. Yuck.
“I’ll take her then, always liked mine feisty. Crazy bitches are always the wildest in bed.” This voice is silky, soothing, but there’s a dumb essence lacing it, as if the owner of the voice has shit for brains.
“Neither of you are touching her. As much as it makes my skin crawl, she’s mine. My future wife. So don’t go near her.” Ah, that’s the raspy drawl of my soon-to-be husband. Lucky me.
My leg starts itching and I have to fight the urge to move. The bed has no comfort, no substance. It feels like I’m lying on weightless clouds and I’m about to fall right through.
“Wait, what? That’s not what you’ve been saying this whole time.”
“I changed my mind. Now she’s here, it doesn’t sit right that anyone but her husband touches her.”
How chivalrous. I’m pretty sure my new fiancé’s first act of love was sedating me with a needle in my arm, now he’s doing me the courtesy of not sharing my body with his friends. How did I get so lucky?
“You said you weren’t gonna touch her either.” There’s the third voice again. It’s a deep one, monotonous and sounds quite bored.
“Exactly. Since I’m not gonna touch her, no one will. She’ll live the rest of her life without a single nut.”
What a charming piece of shit. Why won’t he touch me? Why the hell am I becoming his wife if he doesn’t even like me? My throat starts scratching like sandpaper wedged down there. My leg itches like crazy. I’m going to need to move soon before worms crawl all over my skin.
“God, I know how that feels for forty days, how fucking antsy it makes me, fuck knows what a lifetime will do to a bitch in heat. Especially this little slut.” The silky one sounds frustrated, as if the mere memory of going without pussy for forty days is a hell he doesn’t want to experience again. Try living in a cell.
Better yet, try never having sex. Any that’s consensual, anyway.
“So, you’re just gonna leave this fine piece of ass unbroken, untouched? You’re not even going to consummate the marriage?” Deep Voice says.
“Oh, I’ll break her in if she steps out of line. Best case scenario, she keeps out of my way, keeps the money flowing, and we’ll have no issues.”
What the hell? Isn’t this supposed to be some fairytale for me? Oh wait, that was in my na?ve childhood dreams.
“And worst case?” Deep Voice says.
“Worst case…” A sigh that blows resignation in the air. “I’ll waste a lot of precious fucking time house training a little bitch to follow orders.”
“So how you gonna breed her if you don’t stick your dick in her cunt?” Silky-Smooth Voice says.
“There’re other ways to inseminate her without sticking my dick in her.”
My entire body tenses so tight I’m sure it’s noticeable.
But they continue. They’re probably not even looking at me.
“I don’t think it’s valid until you consummate, bro. Until that day comes, I’d say she was fair game,” Deep Voice says.
“You’re not touching her, Alf. Neither are you, Fiz. You’re not touching anyone for another fifteen days, anyway.”
Okay, we’ve got an Alf and a Fiz. I suppose it’s a bad thing I know my fiancé’s friends’ names before my fiancé’s.
“Urgh, don’t remind me,” Silky-Smooth Voice says, grimly.
Deep Voice says, “My balls have never been this blue. I thought it’d get easier, but I swear my libido has just got worse each year.”
Are they all abstaining from sex? For what?
“It’s a fucking joke, I need to be balls deep in pussy, my brain can’t function. Let me just feel her, bro, just one quick –”
I feel a presence draw closer and my eyes spring open, survival mode kicking in.
First thing I do is scratch my damn leg, then swallow the cotton lodged in my throat, and then finally, I take in the three men before me.
Whoever had leant forward to touch me sprung back into position too quickly, none of them look like they’ve moved closer to me as they all stand at the foot of whoever’s huge, four-poster bed I’m lying on.
All three men are staring at me. Cross-armed and sharp jawed.
The one on the farthest left has an unsettling smirk on his face.
One that says he’d happily eat me alive right now.
Dark hair that coils in loose, lazy curls all around his head.
His T-shirt hugs his body, dipping in the middle of two square pectorals that seem even more puffed out by his veiny arms crossed beneath them as he assesses me.
Dark brown skin, dark brown eyes. Dark, devilish glare.
The one on the right is much bigger. Bulkier than the other two in muscle mass, but not taller.
Boulder shoulders sloping up to a square, chiselled face.
Not as menacing as the other one, a look of mild curiosity pasted on his sculpted features.
Golden blonde hair that’s been slicked back, an escaped tendril curling down into his eye, which is as blue as mine.
A straight nose with a slightly raised bump on the ridge.
He’s got on a short-sleeved grey compression shirt, bearing two full, bulging arms of black and shaded tattoos.
But the one in the middle, I recognise the Slender-Man silhouette immediately.
They’re all pretty tall, but he’s the tallest by a couple inches.
He has this dominating presence that overpowers the other two.
I didn’t get a clear look before, my retinas still sensitive to the assault of the sun after days without it.
But now I see him clearly. The stone-cold, irritated, green-eyed glare boring down on me from the foot of the bed is attached to my soon-to-be husband.
I’ve never met him before, my eyes have never laid upon this man before me, but I know who he is as soon as I see those devilish eyes clearly.
Everyone in my world knows who he is. My future husband is part of the dark web’s biggest flesh sales business on the black market, and dismembering professional, Caden Blackwood.
The notorious, ruthless, violent and terrifying, Caden Blackwood.
My stomach twists into a knot so sickeningly tight it pushes bile up my throat.
Now I know why my father was so evasive about telling me who I was marrying. I would have leaped from the balcony.
There’s one thing that ties my Valor family to the Blackwoods.
Our new business. But our business only integrated because I did something terrible.
Something that tainted my soul and conjured nightmares so terrifying, I fought off sleep for days.
I saved my family from destitution, but it came at a cost too high for any human psyche to recover from.
“Well, our sleeping beauty’s awake!” the one on the left, with the black curls and owner of the silky-smooth voice, says, knocking me from my stupor. His devious smirk parting his lips to reveal a set of straight white teeth.
I take in my surroundings. We’re in a bedroom, the sheets bundled up around me are shiny and soft as silk. Pure black. Like the rest of the room. Black painted walls, black poster bed, black carpet. I notice a door behind the men, looks to be an en suite.
It’s like I’m in some upgraded version of my cell and the monsters have been upgraded from shadows to three leering, intense and unsettling beings. Looking at them now, I think I prefer the monsters from the darkness.
“How do you feel?” Caden says, an almost tired and bored tone lacing his raspy voice.
I stare at him. Does he care how I feel, or does he just feel obliged to ask that?
Those glistening balls of silver on his face that I saw in the sunlight glitter under the light.
He’s got piercings. Left eyebrow, right side of his straight, pointed nose, and a snakebite on the right side of his plump bottom lip.
His black hair’s still messy, like he’s been running his hands through it.
All three of them stand there – at the foot of this giant bed – sizing me up. Glaring, condemning, suspicious. Not a single smidge of evidence that any of them are happy for me to be here. Not one hint that they want me to feel welcome.
I just stare back, unwilling and untrusting of the enemies before me. My intention of escape now almost palpable in my bones. The urge to run, to leap, to fight, all awakened and thrumming beneath my skin, rippling through my drained muscles.
“Ah, great,” Dark Hair says, “she’s fucking mute. That’ll make things more interesting.”
“Answer the question,” Caden says. “Now.”
I lock my blue eyes with his green ones. He’s intimidating, sure, but so is my father. I remain silent.
He licks his top teeth behind closed lips, a clear sign of impatience. The piercing at the edge of his bottom lip sparkles under the light.
“Gees, this’ll be more fun than I originally thought,” Dark Hair says.
Caden moves around to the side of the bed where I’m folded up against the headboard. I back away to the other side, where Dark Hair decides to close in too. Blonde Hair remains at the foot. Solid walls have covered all three escape points. Again, just like my cell.
“Elodie, if you can’t answer a simple question, you and I are going to have much bigger problems than an arranged marriage.” The way Caden says my name – like he’s sick of it already – makes my skin crawl.
“Where am I?” it comes out so thick and croaked it doesn’t even sound like my voice. Well, I haven’t used it in a week.