Chapter 20
Chapter
Twenty
JEX
I’m buried so deep in her I can feel her heart thudding through her back, a frantic, trapped-animal rhythm that matches the slamming of my hips against her.
The mirror in front of her is fogging from her gasps, her forehead pressed against the cold glass, her eyes unfocused and blown wide.
She’s right there. I can feel the first ripples of her climax starting to squeeze my cock, that desperate, internal clenching that tells me she’s about to break.
I want it. I want to feel her shatter under me.
But then I remember the way she looked at Aris. The way she looked at the needle.
I grab her by the hair and yank her back, pulling out of her with a wet, clinical slap just as she lets out a high, broken wail of protest. I don’t let her fall.
I twist her around and shove her down onto the floor, pinning her wrists over her head with one hand, my weight crushing her into the shards of glass and dust.
“No,” I growl, the word tasting like bile. “You don’t get to forget. Not yet.”
She’s sobbing, her hips bucking against the floor, her pussy pulsing and weeping for the friction I just stole. “Jex, please—fuck, please, I was right there—”
“You were nowhere,” I snap. I reach down and grab the heavy leather belt I discarded, wrapping it twice around her wrists, cinching it until the skin goes white. I loop the end around a rusted pipe jutting from the wall, tethering her like a goddamn specimen.
The shift in her eyes is instantaneous. The lust flickers and dies, replaced by a cold, paralysing terror that I know all too well. It’s the Hillside look. The ‘Subject 402’ look. She stares up at me, her chest heaving, the black kohl running down her face like funeral ink.
“Jex?” she whispers, and this time, it’s not a plea for sex. It’s a plea for mercy.
I don’t give it to her. I kneel between her legs, my cock still weeping, angry and purple-red in the flickering light.
I don’t go back inside. I just lean down and press the head of it against her clit, dragging it slowly, agonisingly back and forth through the mess she’s made.
I’m not entering; I’m just haunting the entrance.
“Does this feel familiar, Hallow?” I rasp, leaning over her until my shadow swallows her whole. “The restraints? The cold floor? The man looming over you while you can’t move a fucking inch?”
I see her breath hitch. I see her memory fracture. She’s not in the funhouse anymore. She’s back on the slab, and I’m the one holding the scalpel.
“Stop,” she chokes out, her eyes darting around the room, looking for an exit that doesn’t exist. “Don’t… don’t do this.”
“Why not? I thought you wanted to be ‘hollowed out,’” I hiss, increasing the pressure of my cock against her, teasing the very edge of her sensation while her hands strain against the leather.
I’m making her body scream for a release that her mind is absolutely terrified of.
“I’m just finishing the job, sweetheart.
I’m making sure that every time you feel pleasure for the rest of your pathetic life, you taste the copper of the asylum. ”
I flick my thumb over her nipple, hard, watching her flinch. I’m destroying the one safe thing she had left—the heat between us—and turning it into a cage.
“You’re a monster,” she sobs, her head thrashing on the floor.
“I’m your brother,” I whisper, leaning down to lick the salt from her eyes. “And I’m the only person who’s ever going to tell you the truth. You aren’t free, Hallow. You’re just under new management.”
I keep the rhythm slow, steady, and torturous, watching her fall apart in the dark, caught between a climax she can’t reach and a fear she can’t escape.
I grab the end of the leather tether and haul. The rusted pulley in the ceiling shrieks—a dry, metal scream that echoes through the hollow ribs of the funhouse.
I pull until her toes leave the glass-strewn floor, until she’s dangling like a broken marionette.
Her wrists are cinched tight, her arms straining toward the dark rafters, her ribs flaring with every panicked breath.
I take a length of heavy industrial rope from the crate and loop it around her ankles, jerking them apart and securing them to the iron struts of the walls.
I’ve made her a tripod of meat and trauma.
She’s spread so fucking wide the skin of her inner thighs is pulled taut, glowing ghostly white in the flickering red light.
Her pussy is front and centre—a bruised, weeping flower, wide open and pulsing with a desperate, rhythmic heat.
She’s sobbing now, her head hanging low, her hair a curtain of matted blonde hiding her face.
“Look at me, Hallow,” I command, my voice a jagged rasp.
I kneel in the dirt and the glass between her feet. I’m right in the splash zone of her ruin. The scent of her is a wall—salt, musk, and the sharp, copper tang of her fear. It’s the most intoxicating thing I’ve ever smelled.
I lean in, my breath hot against the sensitive, swollen skin of her outer lips. She flinches, her whole body shuddering against the restraints, but she can’t move an inch. She’s just a target now.
I don’t start with a lick. I start with my teeth.
I lean forward and graze the sensitive hood of her clit with my incisors, just a sharp, stinging nip that makes her back arch so hard her spine groans. She lets out a strangled, high-pitched wail that bounces off the cracked mirrors.
“Is that the ‘dancer’ in you?” I growl, my lips wet with her. “You like the bite? You like knowing I could tear the pleasure right out of you?”
I slide my tongue out—slow, flat, and heavy—and drag it from her perineum all the way up to the top, burying the tip in the heat she’s been hoarding.
She tastes like the end of the world. I swirl my tongue in deep, rhythmic circles, mocking the climax I won’t let her have, while my teeth stay hovering just a hair’s breadth from her skin.
I can feel her internal muscles clenching, trying to find a rhythm, trying to find some mercy in the friction. I don’t give her any. I bite down on her inner labia, a hard, punishing tug that sends a jolt of pure electricity through her frame.
“Please… Jex… please, just finish it,” she gasps, her voice breaking into a thousand jagged pieces.
“I’m not here to finish you, Hallow,” I mumble against her, my tongue flicking over the entrance of her, teasing the slick walls she can’t close. “I’m here to remind you that you’re still a prisoner. The walls are just further apart now.”
I keep at it, a slow-motion wreck of teeth and tongue, watching her undoing from the best seat in the house. I want her so close to the edge that she’s hallucinating the asylum lights. I want her to scream for me until her throat is as raw as her pussy.
Through the gaps in the funhouse boards, I see the first blue and red flashes of the motorcade hitting the pier. The ‘King’ is arriving.
I don’t just want her to hurt; I want her to lose the ability to tell the difference between the pain and the craving.
I reach for a heavy, rusted metal clamp from the maintenance table—something used to hold the gears of the old carousel in place.
It’s cold, smelling of ancient grease and neglect.
I slide it over her right nipple, the serrated teeth of the metal biting into the soft, dark bud until she let out a sound that isn’t a scream—it’s a high, whistling gasp of pure agony.
“Stay focused, Hallow,” I growl, my voice vibrating against the inside of her thigh. “Don’t drift back to the asylum. Stay here with me. Stay in the sting.”
I take a shard of the mirror she broke earlier—a long, jagged sliver of glass—and I don’t cut her.
I just drag the flat side of it over the pulsing, weeping skin of her pussy.
The cold of the glass against the fever of her pussy makes her hips lurch with a violent, involuntary spasm.
I press the sharp tip of it just against the entrance, the glass catching the red light of the clown head, looking like a frozen spark.
“One slip, sweetheart,” I whisper, my tongue flicking over the sensitive skin of her inner lip while the glass hovers over her core. “One wrong move and you’ll never feel anything but the scar.”
She’s sobbing, her head thrashing against the leather tether, her body glistening with a thick coat of sweat that makes her skin shine like chrome. She’s a masterpiece of suffering. I can smell the adrenaline, sharp and metallic, clashing with the musk of her arousal.
I put my teeth back on her clit, but I don’t bite this time. I just trap it between my front teeth, holding the tiny, swollen nerve ending hostage. I hum—a low, deep vibration that travels from my throat, through my teeth, and directly into her brain.
She loses it. Her body goes rigid, her toes curling toward the rafters, her voice failing her as she produces a series of choked, clicking sounds. She’s vibrating so hard the chains holding her to the ceiling begin to rattle, a rhythmic clink-clink-clink that sounds like a countdown.
“You like being a toy, don’t you?” I mumble, my lips stained with her, my fingers digging into the meat of her hips to keep her steady while I torture her with the vibration. “You like that you don’t have to think. You just have to bleed and ache.”
I reach up and twist the clamp on her breast, a sharp, twisting motion that sends a fresh wave of shock through her. I’m playing her like a goddamn instrument, finding every jagged nerve ending Aris overlooked.
Through the cracks in the floorboards, I hear the muffled roar of the crowd outside. The Mayor is taking the stage. He’s talking about ‘family values’ and ‘cleansing the streets.’
I look up at Hallow, hanging there in her ruined, bloody glory, her pussy wide open and twitching under the weight of my gaze. She’s the truth he tried to bury. She’s the filth he sold.
“Time to see Daddy,” I rasp, pulling away just as she reaches the peak, leaving her suspended in a vacuum of unfulfilled lightning.