Chapter 19
Chapter
Nineteen
JEX
I’m leaning against the doorframe, a cigarette burning a hole in the air, and all I can think about is how much I want to shove her head through that goddamn mirror.
Hallow is sitting there, hunched over a vanity that’s more splinters than wood, and she’s losing her fucking mind.
She’s got a stick of deep, bruised red lipstick, and she isn’t applying it—she’s stabbing her face with it. She’s dragging the grease across her mouth, up her cheek, over the bridge of her nose in thick, jagged strokes.
She looks like a car crash in a goddamn sunset.
My blood is humming. It’s that low, vibrating itch in the base of my skull that tells me I’m about to do something I can’t take back.
I watch the way her shoulder blades move under that shredded hospital gown.
They look like wings that got clipped and cauterised.
I want to put my teeth on them. I want to bite down until I taste the copper of her skin and the salt of her rage.
“You’re making a fucking mess,” I rasp. My voice sounds like it’s been dragged through gravel.
She doesn’t stop. She grabs a pot of black kohl and digs her fingers into it, smearing the gunk over her eyes until she looks like she’s bleeding shadows.
“Good,” she spits. She doesn’t look at me. She looks at the version of herself in the glass—the version I created when I pulled her out of that padded cell. “I want them to see it. I want the old man to see what he paid for. I want him to see the filth he left in the dark.”
I drop the cigarette and grind it out with the heel of my boot. I’m across the room before she can blink. I grab her by the hair, yanking her head back until she’s forced to look at me in the reflection.
She doesn’t flinch. She just stares at me with those wide, haunted eyes, the black grease running down her face.
“You think this is about him?” I growl, leaning down until my mouth is an inch from her ear.
I can smell the iron in her sweat and the chemical sting of the makeup.
“You think I brought you here to be some fucking political statement? You’re not a message, Hallow.
You’re the weapon. And right now, you’re acting like a goddamn child with a crayon. ”
I reach around, my hand sliding down the front of her gown, my palm flat against the heat of her stomach.
She’s shaking, a fine, electric tremor that makes my vision go dark at the edges.
I want to rip that gown off her and see every single mark Aris left on her.
I want to map her out with my tongue and then set the whole map on fire.
“I remember the way you used to cry,” I whisper, my hand moving lower, my fingers hooking into the waistband of the thin fabric. “Before they turned the lights off. You were so fucking soft. So easy to break.”
I see her pupils dilate in the mirror. She grabs my wrist, her fingernails digging into my skin, drawing blood.
“I’m not soft anymore,” she snarls.
“No,” I mutter, my grip on her hair tightening until she gasps. “You’re a fucking razor blade. And I want to see you bleed.”
The air in the room is thick, heavy with the smell of old dust and the sudden, suffocating heat between us.
I’m not thinking about the Mayor. I’m not thinking about the “Choir” waiting in the wings.
I’m thinking about the way her skin feels under my calloused hands and the fact that we’re both too far gone to care about things like “sanity” or “sin.”
She turns in my grip, her face a mask of red and black war paint, and she lunges at me. She isn’t trying to escape. She’s trying to consume. She slams her mouth against mine, the taste of that greasy lipstick and her bitter spit exploding on my tongue.
It’s not a kiss. It’s a fucking assault.
I heave her up, her legs locking around my waist, and slam her back onto the vanity. The glass under her moans, perfume bottles shattering and spilling their cloying scent everywhere. I don’t give a fuck about the mess. I don’t give a fuck about the ghosts.
“Tell me,” I growl into her throat, my hands tearing at the fabric of her gown until it’s nothing but rags. “Tell me you want to see it all burn.”
“Light the match,” she screams, her hands clawing at my back, her teeth finding the vein in my neck.
I shove her back across the vanity, the wood groaning and snapping under her weight.
Bottles of cheap, cloying perfume shatter, soaking into the moth-eaten velvet of her gown, mixing with the scent of her skin—a sharp, feral musk of old sweat, hospital soap, and the metallic tang of the blood still drying on her knuckles.
She’s a goddamn mess, and I’ve never wanted anything more in my life.
I rip the front of that pathetic gown open.
The fabric screams as it gives way, exposing her.
She’s too thin, her ribs standing out like the bars of the cage I pulled her from, her skin a map of violet bruises and the faint, silvery white lines where the needles went in.
Her breasts are small, the nipples dark and hard as pebbles in the cold air of the funhouse, shaking with every jagged breath she draws.
“Look at you,” I growl, my voice a thick, ugly sound in the back of my throat.
I move my hand down, my palm dragging over the gooseflesh of her stomach, down to the tangled hair between her thighs.
She’s soaking wet, the scent of her rising up to meet me—heavy, dark, and raw.
I hook my fingers into her, finding the heat of her pussy, and she lets out a sound that’s half-sob, half-snarl.
She’s tight, her muscles clenching around me like she’s trying to pull me inside her and hide me there.
I don’t go fast. I want her to feel every fucking inch of the violation. I want her to remember that this isn’t a rescue; it’s an occupation.
“You’re shaking, Hallow,” I mutter, leaning down to lick a streak of black kohl off her cheek. She tastes like salt and chemical fire. “Is it the cold? Or are you finally realising that I’m the only thing in this world that’s ever going to touch you and mean it?”
I slide another finger in, stretching her, watching her face contort in the mirror behind her head. Her eyes are blown out, all pupil, reflecting the red flickering light of the clown head above us. She looks like a saint being unmade on an altar of trash.
I reach for my belt, the leather creaking in the silence. I’m not going to give her the release she’s begging for. I’m going to keep her right on the edge of the blade, where the pain and the pleasure are the same fucking thing.
“Please,” she gasps, her head tossing back, hitting the glass with a dull thud. Her hands are in my hair, pulling, her nails digging into my scalp until I feel the blood start to trickle. “Jex, please…”
“Say my name again,” I rasp, my teeth grazing the sensitive skin of her inner thigh. I can smell the heat coming off her, the scent of her sex thick enough to choke on. “Say it until you forget who the fuck gave it to you.”
I’m not going to finish. Not yet. I want her to ache. I want her to bleed. I want her to look into that mirror and see exactly what we are—two ghosts fucking in a graveyard, waiting for the sun to burn us to ash.
I pull my fingers out of her with a wet, mocking pop.
She gasps, her hips jerking upward, trying to chase the friction as the cold air hits the slick, pulsing heat of her.
She’s staring at me, her chest heaving, her face a smeared disaster of black and red.
The hunger in her eyes is ugly. It’s the kind of need that makes people eat glass just to feel something sharp.
“Why did you stop?” she snarls, her voice a jagged wreck. “Don’t you fucking quit on me.”
I step back, letting my hands hang at my sides. I look at her—really look at her—splayed out on that shattered vanity like a piece of roadkill I’m deciding whether to keep or bury.
“You want it that bad, Hallow?” I rasp. I reach down and slowly unbutton my fly, the metal of the zipper loud in the silence of the room.
I don’t touch myself. I just let it hang there, thick and heavy, the veins thrumming with a pressure that feels like a lead pipe in my gut. “Look at it. Look at what you did.”
She looks. Her tongue darts out to lick her lip, her pupils swallow the green in her eyes until they’re just black pits of greed.
“You want the release? You think you’ve earned the right to cum?” I let out a low, humourless laugh. I grab a handful of her hair and yank her off the vanity. She hits the floor on her hands and knees, the glass shards biting into her palms. “Get up. Dance.”
“What?” she spits, looking up at me like I’ve lost my mind.
“You heard me. You were a dancer, right? That’s the lie Aris fed you.
That’s the ‘grace’ he thought he could preserve.
” I kick a piece of a broken chair out of the way.
“Show me. Show me what a sick, needy little bitch you are. Dance for me. Make me hard. Make my cock so fucking hard it hurts to breathe, and maybe I’ll think about finishing what I started. ”
She glares at me, the rage in her eyes so pure it could start a fire. She pushes herself up, her knees bleeding, her ruined gown hanging off one shoulder. She’s shaking with a mixture of fury and desperate, aching lust.
“I’ll kill you,” she whispers.
“Maybe. But right now, you’re going to move.”
She starts. It’s not a ballet. It’s a slow, rhythmic haunting.
She moves through the flickering red shadows of the funhouse, her body swaying in a way that’s intentionally provocative and deeply, violently wrong.
She’s watching me the whole time, her fingers tracing the scars on her ribs, her hand sliding down to the dampness between her legs, then bringing her fingers to her mouth to lick them clean while she stares at my cock.
She’s a fucking nightmare.
I feel the blood slam into my dick, the skin stretching until it feels like it’s going to tear. It hurts. It’s a dull, throbbing ache that matches the rhythm of her feet on the warped boards.
“Is that all you’ve got?” I growl, my hand twitching at my side. “Work for it, Hallow. Give me a reason to stay in this room instead of going out there and putting a bullet in our father’s head right now.”
She lets out a low, guttural sound and starts to move faster, her hips rolling, her hair whipping around her face. She’s a blur of bruised skin and smeared paint. She’s not dancing for the audience anymore; she’s dancing for the kill.
I’m standing there, my jaw locked so tight my teeth might shatter, watching her unmake herself just for a taste of me.
“Come here,” I command, my voice a broken, filthy growl.
She stops mid-motion, her chest heaving, her skin glistening with sweat. She crawls toward me on the floor, her eyes never leaving mine, until she’s at my boots.
She doesn’t hesitate. She reaches for me like I’m the last breath of air in a sinking ship, her fingers digging into my thighs, her nails drawing thin, red lines of heat through my skin.
I look down at her, the top of her head a mess of matted blonde hair and grey dust, and then I feel it.
The first graze of her teeth.
I let out a sound that isn’t human—a jagged, guttural roar that echoes off the warped mirrors.
She isn’t being gentle. She doesn’t give a fuck about my comfort.
She grips the base of my cock, her hand small and slick, and drags her teeth slowly, agonisingly along the underside.
The sharp, stinging pressure of her incisors against the throbbing skin makes my vision explode into white sparks.
“F-fuck, Hallow,” I choke out, my hands slamming into the wall behind me, my knuckles cracking against the wood.
She looks up at me from the floor, her eyes feral, the black kohl smeared across her brow like a crown of thorns.
She’s got the head of me between her lips, and she bites.
Just enough to let me know she could take it off if she wanted to.
Just enough to remind me who’s really in control of this agony.
“Is it hurting yet, Jex?” she mumbles, her voice vibrating against my skin, sending a jolt of pure, unadulterated filth straight to my brain. “Is it hard enough for you? Do you feel how much of a bitch I can be?”
I grab her by the hair, my fingers tangling in the knots, and yank her face closer, forcing her to take more of me. I’m shaking. My knees are ready to buckle. The ache in my gut is a screaming, living thing, a demand for the release she’s hoarding like a secret.
She uses her tongue, a hot, wet contrast to the sharp scrape of her teeth, swirling it around the tip until I’m humming with the need to spill.
She’s a genius of cruelty. She knows exactly when to back off, when to let the cold air hit the wet skin, making me throb so hard it feels like a pulse in my throat.
“You like the teeth, don’t you?” she whispers, her eyes locked on mine, watching the way my jaw is locked, the way my breath is coming in short, pathetic hitches. “You like that I want to eat you alive.”
She bites down again, harder this time, her teeth catching the ridge. I lose it. I shove my hand harder into her hair, my hips jerking forward, burying myself in the heat of her mouth. I don’t care about the pain. I don’t care that she’s trying to unmake me.
“More,” I growl, my voice a broken, filthy rasp. “Do it again. Bite me until I forget my own goddamn name.”
She lets out a muffled, triumphant laugh against my skin, her hands sliding up to my chest, her fingers find the scars Aris left on me. She’s mapping my trauma with her teeth while I’m mapping hers with my hands.
The funhouse is silent except for the wet, rhythmic sounds of her mouth and the frantic, uneven thud of my heart against my ribs. I’m a dead man walking, and she’s the one holding the shovel.
I reach down, grabbing her under the arms and hauling her up. I don’t give her a choice. I spin her around, slamming her chest-first against the one mirror that’s still standing, forcing her to look at the mess she’s made of herself while I tear into her from behind.