Chapter 21
Chapter
Twenty-One
HALLOW
The world is a red blur.
The explosion outside was a dull thud in my ears, but the explosion inside me is constant.
The screen is black, the city is screaming, but I am still caught in the teeth of this machine.
My wrists are numb, the leather biting into the bone, and my legs are locked in that wide, humiliating V that Jex carved into the air.
The anchor is still grinding. It’s a low, cruel throb now, a vibration that feels like it’s trying to shake my soul loose from my skin.
I lift my head, my hair sticking to my face in sweaty, tangled clumps.
Through the haze of my own undone nerves, I see him.
He’s standing by the balcony door, the teacup gone, replaced by that matte-black remote.
He’s just watching me. Not with love. Not even with lust. He’s watching me like a scientist watches a chemical reaction he finally mastered.
“You… you sick… fucking… prick,” I wheeze. My voice is a ghost, a shredded remnant of the girl who screamed on the big screen. “Take it… out. Take it out now.”
I thrash against the ropes, the magnets snatching at my labia with every jerk. Each movement is a fresh sting, a reminder that I am tethered to his whim. I want to kill him. I want to wrap these chains around his neck and watch his eyes bulge the way our father’s did.
Jex doesn’t flinch. A slow, dark smirk crawls across his face—the kind of look a shark gives the water right before it hits.
“You’re still talking, Hallow,” he says, his voice a low, terrifying crawl. “That means the frequency is too low. You shouldn’t have enough breath left to hate me.”
He thumbs the slider.
The hum turns into a roar. The anchor inside me kicks into a violent, offset orbit, slamming against my G-spot with the force of a piston. It’s not a buzz; it’s a goddamn assault. My vision fractures. The red light of the clown head above me turns into a thousand bleeding suns.
“Oh god—” The scream is ripped out of me, but it morphs mid-air into a wet, helpless moan. “Oh god… oh god, no… Jex…”
“God?” Jex lets out a short, jagged laugh as he walks toward me, his boots clicking on the glass shards.
He stops right between my spread legs, looking up at the wreck he’s made.
“There is no god here, sweetheart. There’s just the ghost of a brother who died in a chair, and the sister who’s finally learning how to scream his name. ”
I’m cumming again. It’s a violent, unwanted surge that feels like my internal organs are being turned inside out. My pussy is weeping, the slick heat running down my thighs in a steady stream, making the metal anchor slide even deeper, even harder.
“Oh god… Jex… fuck… I’m cumming… stop it, please… oh god…”
I’m begging for the end, but my body is betraying me, reaching for the peak with a frantic, animal greed. I’m shaking so hard the rafters are groaning, the chains rattling a frantic rhythm.
“Don’t look for heaven, Hallow,” he whispers, leaning in until his lips are brushing against the swollen, vibrating skin of my inner thigh. “Look at me. I’m the only thing that’s real. I’m the only one who knows exactly how much it takes to break you.”
He thumbs the remote again, a sharp, rhythmic pulsing that mimics the beat of a heart. My muscles clench in sync with it, my climax stretching out into a long, agonising plateau of pleasure. I’m lost in it. I’m drowning in the frequency.
Outside, the funhouse is surrounded by the orange glow of the burning pier. But in here, in the dark, there is only the machine, the man, and the girl he turned into a riot.
The frequency shifts.
The violent, industrial grind of the anchor drops away, replaced by a rhythmic, staccato thump-thump-thump.
It’s a tapping sensation, a localised pulse that hits the most sensitive nerve endings in a way that feels exactly like a hot, frantic tongue darting against my clit.
It’s light, teasing, and so fucking precise I feel my toes curl toward the ceiling.
“Oh… oh fuck,” I gasp, my head lolling back. My nails, chipped and caked with dried kohl, dig into the leather binds around my wrists until the skin of my palms splits. “Jex… please… it feels like… oh god, oh god…”
He steps into the space between my legs, his shadow looming over me like a god of ruin. He doesn’t touch the machine. He doesn’t have to. He just watches the way my pussy reacts to the tapping—the way the lips are swollen, bright red, and pulsing in time with the remote.
“I told you, sweetheart,” he whispers, his voice a low, gravelly vibration that competes with the hum of the motor.
He leans in, his mouth finding the sensitive cord of my neck.
He doesn’t kiss me; he sucks the skin hard, marking me, his teeth grazing the tendon.
“God isn’t here to save you. God didn’t even show up for the rehearsal. ”
I let out a broken, high-pitched moan as he licks a path from my collarbone to my ear. I can feel the heat of his body, the scent of tea and gunpowder, clashing with the electric fire the anchor is sparking in my veins.
“Look at you,” he rasps, pulling back just enough to stare at the wreckage of my lap. “Fuck, Hallow. You’re fucking dripping all over my floor.”
I look down, my vision swimming. He’s right. The slick, clear heat of my arousal is streaming down my thighs, fat droplets falling from the base of the vibrating anchor and splashing onto the dusty floorboards. It’s a steady, rhythmic drip-drop that sounds like a clock counting down my sanity.
Jex lets out a slow, dark exhale. He drops the remote onto the floor—leaving it on that torturous, licking tempo—and sinks to his hands and knees in the glass and the filth.
My breath hitches. “Jex?”
He doesn’t answer. He crawls forward until his face is inches from the wood.
I watch, paralysed by a mix of shame and a hunger so deep it feels like a physical ache, as he tilts his head.
He extends his tongue, slow and deliberate, and licks a long, broad streak of my cum directly off the floorboards.
He swallows, his eyes snapping up to mine. They’re dark, blown out, reflecting the orange fire of the burning pier outside.
“Tastes like a goddamn miracle,” he growls, his voice thicker than before. He licks another spot, his tongue dragging over the rough wood, savouring the salt and the heat of my undoing.
He stays there, on all fours like a predator, looking up at me through the curtain of his hair. “Do you hear them, Hallow? The sirens? They’re coming for the Mayor. But nobody’s coming for us. We’re the only ones left in the world.”
He reaches up, his hand wrapping around my calf, squeezing until it hurts. The anchor inside me spikes, the remote on the floor buzzing against the wood, and I feel another wave of release building—bigger, darker, and more violent than the last.
“Please,” I sob, my body arching into the chains. “Jex, please, I can’t… I’m going to break…”
“Break then,” he snarls, his tongue darting out to catch a fresh drop before it hits the ground. “I want to hear the sound of it.”
I’m hanging there, a vibrating wreck of nerves and salt, watching him rise from the floor like a demon pulling itself out of the pit. He doesn’t wipe his mouth. He just stares at me, his eyes dark with a hunger that feels older than the city itself.
He reaches for a red plastic jerrycan leaning against the vanity. The sloshing sound of the gasoline is heavy, a liquid threat that cuts through the cloying smell of my own sex.
“You think those men saw you, Hallow?” he rasps, stepping into the circle of my spread legs.
He doesn’t touch me yet. He just stands there, the fumes of the gas making my head swim.
“Those suits? Those pigs Aris sold your skin to? They didn’t touch you.
They touched a ghost. They didn’t deserve a single fucking inch of the girl I remember. ”
He reaches out, his thumb tracing the line of my jaw, dragging down to my throat. His skin is hot, calloused, and smells of iron.
“You were always mine,” he growls, his face inches from mine.
“Before the needles. Before the padded cells. Do you have any goddamn idea how many nights I sat in the dark, stroking my cock until it bled, just thinking about the way your skin would taste? About the way you’d scream my name if I was the one hurting you instead of them? ”
I let out a broken, shuddering sob, my body still twitching under the rhythmic tapping of the anchor inside me. “Jex…”
“Shut up,” he snarls, and then he hits me with it—the kiss.
It’s not a kiss; it’s a collision. It’s hot, wet, and tastes like the Earl Grey and the cum he just licked off the floor.
He devours my mouth, his tongue forcing my teeth open, claiming the space like he’s trying to swallow my very breath.
It’s so intense, so violently possessive, that the friction of his lips against mine makes my stomach flip.
I find myself kissing him back with a desperate, starving ferocity, my bound hands straining against the ceiling as I try to pull him closer, to melt into the heat of him.
He pulls away just an inch, our spit connecting us in a thin, silver thread in the red light.
“Here’s the deal, sweetheart,” he whispers, his breath hitching. He kicks the remote on the floor, and a digital timer on the screen starts a sixty-second countdown. 60… 59… 58…
He begins to walk in a slow circle around me, tilting the jerrycan. The clear, amber liquid splashes onto the floorboards, soaking into the dust and the glass, forming a perfect, shimmering ring of death around my suspended body. The smell is suffocating—raw, chemical, and lethal.
“If you cum before that timer hits zero,” he says, his voice a low, terrifying promise, “I don’t light the match. You get to live. You get to be mine for another day.”
He stops in front of me, his hand reaching out to grab the anchor vibrating inside me, twisting it sharply so it grinds against my bone.
“But if you don’t…” He pulls a zippo from his pocket. He flicks it open. The small, orange flame dances in the reflection of my terrified eyes. “Then we both burn. Right here. In the middle of the mess we made.”
The timer hits 45. The anchor is screaming inside me, the tapping turning into a frantic, high-speed assault. I’m caught between the fire and the filth, my body arching, my pussy sobbing for the release that is now the only thing keeping me from the flame.
“Work for it, Hallow,” he growls, holding the lighter near the edge of the gasoline circle. “Show me how much you want to stay alive.”
The timer is a digital heartbeat, bleeding red numbers into the dark.
38… 37… 36… The smell of the gasoline is a physical weight now, thick enough to taste, making my lungs burn.
I look down at the shimmering ring of death encircling me and then at Jex.
He’s standing just outside the circle, the Zippo flame dancing in his eyes, his face a mask of cold, beautiful cruelty.
“Jex… help me,” I whisper, my voice cracking, a pathetic, jagged sound. “Please, I can’t… I can’t get there like this. Help me.”
He tilts his head, a slow, mocking smirk pulling at the corner of his mouth. “And how am I supposed to do that, sweetheart? I’m the one holding the match. You’re the one on the hook. This is your solo.”
“Come closer,” I sob, my body jerking as the anchor inside me hits a nerve so sharp I see stars. “Close… please. I need you.”
He hesitates for a fraction of a second, the predator in him debating whether to play or kill.
Then he snaps the Zippo shut and steps across the gasoline line.
He moves into the space between my spread legs, his chest pressing against my stomach, his heat radiating through the thin, ruined rags of my gown.
“I’m here,” he rasps, his hands staying at his sides, refusing to touch me. “What are you going to do about it?”
I growl—a feral, desperate sound—and I start to move.
Because my ankles are tethered wide to the struts, I can’t wrap my legs around him.
I can’t pull him in. I have to use the core of my body, thrusting my hips forward, grinding the swollen, weeping heat of my pussy against the hard, unforgiving ridge of his denim.
The friction is electric. Every time I slam my pelvis against his, the anchor inside me shifts, caught between the pressure of his body and my internal walls.
“Fuck, Hallow,” he groans, his head falling into the crook of my neck. I feel his hands finally snap, grabbing my hips, bruising the skin as he holds me steady for the assault. “You’re fucking burning up. You’re going to melt that goddamn machine.”
“Let me… use you,” I pant, my eyes fixed on the timer.
22… 21… 20… I’m grinding against him with everything I have, my muscles screaming, the sweat dripping off my chin and onto his shirt.
“I need your cock, Jex. I need to feel you, not just the steel. Give it to me… make me cum or let us both burn.”
I’m working for every bit of sensation, twisting my body, forcing the contact until I can feel the throb of his pulse through his pants. He’s rock hard, a lead pipe against my clit, and the combination of the tapping anchor and his solid, masculine weight is pushing me over the cliff.
“You’re a fucking monster,” he mutters, his teeth sinking into my shoulder, his breath hot and ragged. “A beautiful, sick, desperate monster.”
I can feel the wave starting—a tidal wave of black fire starting at the base of my spine. The timer hits 12. My heart is slamming against my ribs like a bird in a cage.
“Jex! Now!” I scream, my hips bucking frantically against him, the friction turning into a blinding, white-hot heat that smells like ozone and sin.