Chapter 5 Dread
DREAD
Five seconds.
That's all I get to enjoy the blissful heaviness weighing my body down after waking from the deepest sleep I’ve ever had.
On the sixth second, a pressing emptiness creeps in—except the weight of it is fucking crushing.
I sit up so quickly, I crack my hip, my eyes whipping around the room in search of her.
Fuck.
She’s gone.
I’m immediately fucking pissed.
I’m not sure what infuriates me more—that I didn’t wake up when she did, or that I was more affected than her and slept like a goddamn rock.
I’ve no idea how long ago she left, but it doesn’t matter.
She was awake.
In my fucking room.
While I was dead to the world.
And that has my skin crawling.
I reach for my phone, note the time as seven o’clock, then turn on my camera to inspect myself, ensuring she didn’t pull some stupid shit and draw on my face with the Sharpie.
Once I find nothing, I study every inch of my room to see if there’s anything amiss, searching for even the smallest of changes. But I find nothing, and my suspicions deepen.
I can’t recall a single moment when Reverie hasn’t struck back after I fucked with her, or at least found some way to piss me off all over again. She’s a cancerous cell that keeps growing back.
So I don’t trust for a single moment that she just left.
I must’ve accidentally clicked the gallery in the corner of the camera app, because when I glance back at my phone, I’m met with the picture I took last night.
The effect is instantaneous.
Lava replaces every blood cell in my body, warming my insides to catastrophic levels. My dick swells, hardening to the point of pain, and my mouth waters.
Exhaling harshly, I settle back on both elbows, tip my head back, and close my eyes, attempting to erase the image from my mind—except it’s burned into the backs of my fucking retinas.
Even in the dark, I can see her beautiful tits, her blonde hair splayed across my pillow, her half-lidded eyes peering up at me from beneath her bangs while I licked that tear from her cheek.
Any rational thought boils and dissipates into smoke. My free hand roughly shoves down my sweatpants before fisting my cock, a low groan releasing from my throat at the acute sensation as I slowly stroke from base to tip.
“Fuck,” I hiss through clenched teeth, dropping my chin to my chest and returning my gaze to the picture.
One look evokes another shot of ecstasy straight down my length, my balls tightening painfully. A bead of pre-cum gathers on the swollen tip, leaking down to my hand before being swept up as lubrication.
My hand twists, and my vision blurs at the edges, yet the image of Reverie stays perfectly clear.
I see nothing outside of it, can think of nothing other than her trapped in my hold, helpless and crying, the salty taste of her tear on my tongue and her shuddering body, even her trembling voice as she pleaded with me to stop.
Except it wasn’t my touch she shied away from, but the black ink staining her skin.
Would she have let me dip my hand between her pale thighs? Let me feel if she was wet and burning for me despite the chill corroding her insides? Would her pleas have changed from asking me to stop to begging for more? How would they have sounded?
My stomach tightens as I conjure a different plea I haven’t had the pleasure of hearing. The euphoria builds far too quickly, and I force my hand to release myself, my swollen cock harder than it has ever been.
“God fucking dammit, Rev,” I growl beneath my breath, my hips involuntarily flexing, seeking the pleasure I deny myself.
Every muscle in my body is tight and on the verge of combusting. The veins roping throughout my neck and arms are no better off, stretching my skin until it feels like the monster inside my chest is breaking free. It’s winning, and I’m fucking helpless to stop it.
Gritting my teeth, I relent and grab my cock again, roughly twisting my hand up and down, my grip punishing. But the pain is impossible to separate from the pleasure, doing little to keep me from barreling toward the edge of sanity.
I lose all sense of control. My gaze locks on my phone, and I replay that little gasp she made the moment the tip of my tongue touched the soft flesh of her cheek.
My brain amplifies it, twists it, turns it into a soft moan, a whimper, a breathless cry.
Sounds she’s never made for me, yet they are as real as the pleasure consuming me.
Sounds that, at this moment, I’d give anything to fucking hear.
God, the things I’d do to her just to draw them out. I wouldn’t give a fuck if it took pleasure or pain. I’d give her both until she felt what I feel now—a dangerous cocktail of fire and ice swirling together in the perfect storm.
Kellan.
I thrash my head, an attempt to banish the erotic whisper moaning a name she has no fucking right to. Instead, it echoes, and I can’t stop it from intensifying, demanding my pleasure as fiercely as my hand.
Kellan!
My vision blackens, and I choke on a groan.
I squeeze my eyes shut from the euphoria rocketing through my body, forcing it to contort and seize.
Vaguely, I’m aware of cum exploding from my cock, covering my stomach and chest in hot ribbons.
But the pleasure sweeping through me and wreaking carnage on my insides is a force powerful enough to hold me hostage.
I feel, hear, see nothing except the apparition of a woman I was helpless to exorcize.
It takes too long to release me from its clutches. By the time its claws retract, my head is swimming, and I can’t fucking breathe.
Aftershocks rack my loosening muscles, seizing and releasing. Lungs tight, I melt into the bed, my bones, muscles, and organs liquefying until I’m nothing more than gelatin soaking into cotton sheets.
Lazily, my head lolls to the side, finding the phone lying on the bed haphazardly, the screen dim but the picture still visible.
At the height of pleasure, that’s when we become our most depraved, especially when we’re alone.
The excitement, the thrill of it—it’s a drug that descends us into madness.
But the second the orgasm fades, reality sinks in that we’re watching a fucked-up porn video or got off to disgusting things we’d never find appealing otherwise.
What was the sexiest fantasy mere moments ago now brings utter disinterest, if not disgust.
It’s a reaction I expect the second I set eyes on the photo—and it hits full force.
Revulsion swirls in my stomach, except not from the picture itself.
Rather, it’s with myself, because I don’t find it revolting.
There’s not a single goddamn ounce of me that finds anything about the photo deplorable, and if I stare long enough, I’ll end up with my hand wrapped around my cock all over again.
It feels like a betrayal to my mother, to the women her father senselessly murdered. And that… that’s what has shame sliding down my throat, blackening my insides like I’ve swallowed oil.
My alarm blares, snapping me out of my darkening thoughts.
Growling, I smash my thumb on the dismiss button and get up to clean the evidence off me. My mood plummets, lost somewhere within the nine levels of hell.
I’ll delete the fucking photo and erase this moment from my memory.
Because the last thing I’ll ever do is betray my mother for someone who shares the blood of her goddamn murderer.
I’ve been here for hours, journalist after journalist in my face while other teams swim, and I’m fucking tired. Beyond fucking tired.
With being on both the college team for Hollow Canyon and Team USA for the Olympics, I’m used to the back-to-back practices, training, and meets.
Saturdays are for the college team, and they’re typically a lot calmer than competitions with the USA team.
Not as many journalists or fans in the bleachers.
Except today, it feels like the reporters have tripled and the crowd is larger, though it’s entirely possible that’s because I’m seeing three of everything.
It also feels like I haven’t slept in years.
The worst part of meets is how long it takes to get to your turn again, but usually, I put on a pair of headphones and zone out. If I do that now, though, I’ll pass the fuck out, and the second Coach notices, I might swallow his fist alongside a few teeth.
In the beginning, I could push past it and get through my first set. I didn’t break any records, but I finished one point eight seconds before anyone else, and that was enough to have my team roaring.
But now, it’s becoming more and more impossible to resist the siren’s call of sleep. It feels like I have goddamn dumbbells for eyelids, and as each second passes, I grow weaker in the battle to keep them open.
“Dread, you good?”
The voice is familiar, but it sounds fucking light years away, barely penetrating the fog clouding my head.
“Mmm?” I mumble, turning my chin toward the sound and cracking open my eyes a millimeter. Even that takes an immense amount of effort.
“Bro, you’re up in twenty minutes.”
Someone grips my shoulder and jostles me, snapping me out of the deep void I'd unknowingly fallen into again. Again, I open my eyes, finding Rogue sitting on the bench beside me, his brow furrowed with confusion and lips downcast.
“The fuck is going on with you?”
Rogue’s on the college team with me, though he doesn’t swim for Team USA.
He had no interest in going to the Olympics, mainly because he said it was too much time spent getting wet by something that wasn’t pussy, and he’d rather listen to a woman moan his name than strangers cheer it. Gold medals never meant shit to him.