Chapter 5
Isqueeze my eyes shut as a vivid image flashes in my mind of the man I catfished, chained and face down on a bench as Kryx tortures him, leaving angry, red lash marks across his skin.
My heart races as his screams of agony echo, pulsing against the inside of my skull, and a sheen of sweat covers my skin as I watch this man be punished for a deed I had a hand in.
I should be terrified, and yet, I’m turned on.
So fucking turned on.
My pussy pulses as he keeps dragging his claws down my sides, and goosebumps cover my skin.
This demon has been haunting my dreams for years, exploiting me while I sleep.
I should be utterly disgusted, but I can’t stop trying to recall more memories of the filthy, naughty things I let him do to me, which make me blush and heat me to the core.
I guess in some fucked-up way, I did consent to him being there, and I have the faintest idea that I only encouraged his malicious acts.
Yeah, that sounds about right.
The bindings around my wrists loosen, and I reach up to touch one of his horns, sliding my finger down the ribbed, black bones. He groans, the sound so deep it vibrates through the bed—and through me.
I wrap my fingers around the curve, and he lets out a hiss, his body tensing as I glide my hand up and down, treating it like it were his hard cock in one of my lucid dreams. There, he’s rough but careful.
He finds the perfect balance of pain and pleasure that keeps me begging for more, but even as the memories come back, shattered like glass I’m trying to piece together, there’s a part of me that feels empty and still longs for more.
“Little vixen,” he moans. “You’re playing a dangerous game.”
Reality creeps back in, the flashes of my dreams fading as I reach for them.
Instead, a sense of impending doom fills the empty space in my chest, making my heart race.
I need to get him off me and run. He’s like a worm on a hook, trying to lure me in—drag me into whatever fucked-up relationship that already seems to exist.
If I were to escape, where would I even go?
The ranger’s station? Like they would do anything.
A hotel? That sounds a bit more realistic, if I don’t freeze to death in the several feet of snow covering the forest—the same snow my car is stuck under.
Still, it’s miles and miles to the nearest ranger station or another cabin, and there wouldn’t be enough time to grab my emergency bag or dig myself out.
But my fucked-up family didn’t raise a pussy, now did they?
A grin pulls at my lips as his pupils flare, his body tensing more as I reach up with my free hand and grip his other horn, running both up and down in unison.
If I can get him off like this, maybe he’ll fall asleep, and I can make my escape.
I put on my video face, licking and biting my bottom lip.
“So, jolly ole Saint Nick gets the fun job, and you have to do all this physical labor, huh?” I say in a low, teasing tone as I continue stroking him.
His widened eyes snap up, meeting mine. His body becomes even more rigid as he slides his hand up the neck of my shirt and covers my mouth, pressing his large palm against my lips.
“Do not speak his name aloud, ever. He sees you when you’re sleeping, and he knows when you’re awake, but if you speak of him as a believer, you feed into his power.
While he’s portrayed as a nice and jolly man, he’s far from it.
” His eyes flash, viciously swirling like the storm outside.
“The North Pole is a dark place, little vixen, full of monsters and evil spirits, and he’s no different. ”
My eyes widen as he slides his hand away from my lips, wrapping it around my throat while my mouth gapes. “But wasn’t he a real man who loved children and left them toys? Or is that a lie, too?”
He tilts his head to the side, his free hand continuing to explore my body, pressing his fingers into my curves and full hips.
“He was a man once, yes. But that was centuries ago. As he aged, he sought immortality, abandoning every moral he ever held, and made a deal that left a dark mark on his soul. He is vastly different from the rosy-cheeked, plump man mortals have come to love and admire.”
His eyes flick toward the door as if he’s waiting for someone to burst through it, then he pulls his gaze back to me.
“He didn’t come to rule the North Pole with kindness and goodwill toward men, but with the ruthlessness of a mad king who will stop at nothing to be the most powerful being between Hell and Earth.
He and his missus trap and use those they see as threats or are desperately alone, treating them as nothing more than toys. ”
I stare back at him as shadows close in around us, darkening the room. What the actual fuck? Santa Claus, the jolly man who brings gifts to children's houses, rides in a sleigh, and has adorable elves make the toys, is evil? What’s next? The Easter Bunny is a man-eating monster who steals children?
“And if you think the elves he has enslaved are like those depicted in your stories, you’d be very, very wrong,” he says lowly, as if he read my mind. Can he? If he can slip so easily into my dreams and do who knows what, then surely, he can read my mind, right?
My brows furrow as I watch him, his eyes fixed on where his hand rests on my throat. “Can you read my mind?”
He laughs, the sound circling me like a shark in bloody water. “No, little vixen. However clever you believe yourself to be, you reveal your curiosity on your face. You are an open book.”
My brows knit together, and my nose scrunches.
I am clever, you motherfucker. How else would I be so successful in conning people out of their money if I weren’t?
But I don’t need to explain myself to him, this monster, because once he’s done with.
.. whatever this is, I’ll be going right back to raking in the cash and living my best life.
Maybe next time, I’ll disappear to an island and hide away in a secluded beach town, living on rum and the freshest seafood.
“How did you get into my dreams?” I ask, my voice strained from the lump in my throat.
His eyes seem to swirl, their inky black depths like a dark sea ready to drag me under. “I simply knocked, and you let me in,” he says casually, as if that’s completely normal.
He shifts, and I hear the clink of chains just as the cold bite of metal grips my wrists again, pulling them away from his horns and back up over my head.
He runs his tongue over his sharp teeth as his eyes darken.
“Don’t think I didn’t notice that you left the front door unlocked tonight.
As if knowing that even a blizzard wouldn’t stop me, and it only made it that much easier for me to get to you. ”
I blink in disbelief. I never leave the door unlocked. I’m way too paranoid for that, even in a remote forest. There’s no fucking way...
I gasp as he presses his hardening length against my center, his leather pants the only barrier between us. Something cold, like a winter wind, begins to tighten around my thighs and pulls my knees up, keeping my legs spread open and my pussy exposed.
I look down and see that his shadows have been binding me, tightening with each move I make as if they're a boa constrictor. “You have always begged for me, Nicolette, and I want not only to hear you beg... but I want to hear you scream.”
He slides off me and steps to the end of the bed, his massive body looming over me.
I try to steady my breathing, but the anticipation rushes through my veins as a leather flogger appears in his hand, his fingers gripping the handle tightly.
I struggle against the shadow bindings, but it’s useless.
“No, please,” I gasp. “What are you doing? Wait.”
Running the tendrils through his palm, he gives me a wicked smile just as he whips them against my thigh, right over the bite mark he left.
I cry out in pain, but my body keeps betraying me as my pussy pulses with need just as he snaps it against my other thigh.
I let out another cry as he moves back and forth, heat pooling between my legs—dripping.
He runs his fingers up my center, coating them with my desire, before he brings them to his lips—his long, forked tongue licking them clean. “Fucking delicious,” he groans, bringing them back to tease my entrance. “I could eat you for every fucking meal.”
I squirm, and he makes me pant like a bitch as he pulls his fingers away, sliding the tendrils of the flogger through my folds.
With a flick of his wrist, he flogs my pussy, and my back arches off the bed as I let out another cry.
Pain mixes with pleasure as he pushes me toward the edge with every strike until he finally stops.
My breath is heavy, and my thighs burn with both pain and desire, causing my inner walls to clench. I feel the warm leather handle at my entrance, and I whimper as he pushes it in inch by inch before slowly pumping it in and out of me.
“Please, fuck me,” I beg, barely recognizing my pleas as the last specks of my self-respect fade away. “I’ll be a good girl, I promise.”
He chuckles darkly and keeps teasing me with the handle. “Naughty girls don’t get to make demands, especially lying ones.”
He uses his free hand to tug at the laces of his leather pants, his cock springing free, and I can’t stop the groan that escapes me at the sight of his hard length in front of me.
It’s long and thick, with a dark onyx tip—the color of his hooves—that fades down his shaft to the charcoal gray of his skin.
Silver balls glint along the underside, like bells, from the Jacob’s Ladder piercings that climb up him.
Precum drips from the tip like melting snow as he pumps his hand up and down the length, the thick vein underneath pulsing.