6. Chapter 6
Chapter 6
Annie
“ Y ou really didn’t have to go along with this,” I say as Mel and I enter my room at the sorority house. I’m carrying a folded extra comforter for her, while she’s carrying the pillows. “It was Eva who drew the short straw anyway, and since it was her idea, she should have been the one to endure these sleeping arrangements.”
I place the comforter on my bed, and go to open the sofa bed.
“You should be grateful I took over, or you would have had Micah take up the post right outside your door. He can’t stay away from Eva. It’s sick, really, and it won’t be getting any better. So why would you even want her here?”
“Well, you’re a princess. Of all of us, you’re the most likely to sense the pea under all the mattresses and duvets. ”
She chuckles, and my mood lightens for the first time in days.
“Still, this is overkill.” I part the curtain with two fingers, peeking outside at the line of black cars stationed outside the house. “So many guards.”
Mel sighs, starting to make her bed on the open sofa. “Micah and Sade say you pissed off some nasty people.”
Especially Aragon Kovac.
I step away from the window, rubbing my arms.
“And, to top it all, everyone on campus thinks I’m a slut.”
Mel drops a pillow on her bed. “Don’t call yourself that.”
“That’s what I am in everybody’s eyes.”
“Right now I think people are far more preoccupied with how Carlton stood up for you at the pub. That was tonight’s highlight. I’m pretty sure it outshone everything else.”
I look at her guiltily. “I put you in danger. When I saw that guy drop onto the seat next to you—”
“Nothing happened, and nothing would have.” She waves a hand to dismiss the whole thing before she grabs the hem of her blouse, pulls it over her head and drops it on my vanity table chair. “My family isn’t nearly as powerful as a Heathen King’s, but I'm still a tobacco empire princess. No one would invite that kind of heat unnecessarily.”
I sit down on the foot of my bed.
“I refused to pay the price. That’s what triggered them. Now Carlton has to clean up my mess.”
“Don’t you dare feel guilty.” She drops on the bed next to me, taking my hands in hers.
“I don’t feel guilty, I feel like I owe him.”
“You don’t owe him jack shit. He’s a powerful Heathen King, Annie, and he took your virginity. If anything, he owes you .”
“It wasn’t his decision. I twisted his arm. In fact, if you look carefully at the situation, you might realize that what I did was kind of rapey. He made it very clear that my attention wasn’t welcome.”
Mel stares at me incredulously for a moment, and then she bursts into laughter.
“Glad that my shitty situation amuses you.” I glare at her .
“No, I mean—” She takes a minute to pull herself together, but she keeps bursting into laughter before she can finally talk coherently again. I glare at her, raising an eyebrow. “The guy is six fucking feet tall. He’s a muscular beast covered in tattoos that I understand describe each one of his gruesome kills—there’s a map of them on his back. And you raped him?” She mock-pouts. “Did you bully him first, too?”
I shrug. “If you put it like that sure it sounds stupid, but—”
“That’s because it is stupid. It’s crazy.” She holds my hands up so I can see the bruises around my wrists. “He put you in handcuffs and fucked you from behind in front of six other men. I can’t believe you’re actually making him the victim here.”
“Yes, well, I’m not exactly a victim, and somebody does have to pay the price, and—”
“You, Annie.” She holds my wrists closer to my face. “ You are the victim.”
I shake my head. “I found a way into those chat rooms. I uploaded videos—”
“That doesn’t mean anyone gets to force you to do more. And the first thing you did not offer and yet was taken from you is your identity. Those guys stopped at nothing to find out who you were after what happened at church.”
“I tricked them. I didn’t pay the price.”
“No, you didn’t. Carlton did when he decided to beat those guys up instead of letting you go through with it.” She frowns grimly. “It doesn’t make any sense, but he did it.”
“On that we agree.” I sigh, my shoulders slouching. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Unless he, you know, feels more for you than he lets on.”
I shake my head, completely rejecting the possibility. “I seriously doubt it.”
“I don’t.” Letting go of my hands, she reaches over to the other side of the bed where I dropped the chemise I gave her. “And it’s not just because of how he stepped in for you tonight at the pub, or the night you gave him your v-card.” She pulls the chemise over her head, the fabric dropping smoothly down her very feminine body. “It’s also, you know, the night of the mayhem.” Her voice dies down. We never talk about that night. “He killed a man for you. ”
“He killed many men that night.” My stomach twists at the memory of his knife slicing across a man’s throat as if cutting through butter, the guy’s face slamming against the floor in front of me, his dilated pupils slowly contracting as life drained from him.
“He carried you to safety.”
“What else could he have done?”
“I don’t know, maybe gone on taking lives. But he put everything on hold for you.” She bends closer. “He has a sworn duty to serve the Heathen Kings before he even serves his own family. What he did for you went against the Kings’ code.”
“So what are you telling me?” I angle my body to her, folding my arms.
“That you mean more to Carlton Wilde than he lets on.”
“May I remind you that he left with Rosalind tonight? Right after he put me in my place?”
“I’m not sure he’s got things very clear, either, and I’m not saying that I like any of this.” Her intelligent gaze holds mine. “You know how I’ve always felt about your infatuation with him, and things haven’t changed. I still think he’s a dangerous snake. After all, he inks his fucking kills on his body.”
I narrow my eyes. The tattoos on his body are supposed to tell a story.
Mel leans back against the headboard.
“His kills,” she repeats, as if to get it inside my head. “That’s what each and every one of his tattoos stands for.”
I don’t even bother trying to pretend. I’ve been studying every single picture I got of Carlton in a T-shirt or a tank top. I’m perfectly familiar with the twisted web of symbols. Grim reapers cutting through vines that entwine in a macabre tapestry with crucifixes. A chill runs through me as I think about the skull I glimpsed on his back once when he took off his T-shirt after a game to replace it with a dry one. It only lasted a second, but I saw it. Snakes slithered out of all its holes and radiated to the rest of his body.
“I can’t believe he never talked to any of the Kings about them.”
Mel shrugs. “Eva says he did share some of his past with Micah. ”
I look toward the double glass doors that open into the balcony, the curtains now drawn so the guards can’t see inside. I’ve changed so much ever since the mayhem. All of us have.
“I never would have done it before the mayhem,” I whisper, bringing my knees up and hugging them. I’m still looking at the curtains instead of at Mel. It makes talking easier. “I wouldn’t have dared approach Doreen and made the arrangements, much less agreed to the kind of price she demanded. I mean, I know she didn’t demand it for herself, but—”
“Don’t protect that piece of shit. If she’s under pressure from rich men it’s because she chooses to be.” Mel has never made a secret of her visceral contempt for Doreen. She’d tear the woman’s bar down with her bare hands if she had her way. “She’s the reason all those guys know who you are now. She told fucking Aragon Kovac.”
She makes herself more comfortable against the headboard, crossing her legs at the ankles. “That bastard isn’t used to losing,” she continues. “I’m sure we haven’t seen the last of him at the pub. ”
“His brother isn’t done with me either. I could tell from the way he glared at me over his shoulder just before they left.”
“Carlton might have just made this game more interesting for them. Especially for Aragon. He’s a twisted bastard.”
“And he’s not even my only problem. There were six other men at the ritual besides Carlton. Four to worry about.”
“If they’re half as dangerous as Kovac, he won’t be able to protect me.”
“Yes, he will,” she assures me. “They call him the jungle snake for a reason. You never know what to expect of him. If Micah is swift, like a cobra, Carlton is an anaconda. Plotting. Scheming. Biding his time. And when he strikes, he never misses.”
When I let Doreen drive me into the depths of the forest and walked through that graveyard toward an old, abandoned church, that’s exactly what I was after—the jungle snake’s attention. His dark interest. His poisonous desire.
His deadly touch .
But now I realize I might be in over my head. Still, I can’t bring myself to regret it.
“I would keep those guards around, Annie,” she says gravely. “You need all the protection you can get, and not just from the four bastards who want a piece of you, but from Carlton once he’s done with them.”
“I don’t think he’d hurt me,” I say, listening to my intuition.
“I don’t either. I think he’d do much worse.”
***
Carlton
I draw behind a tree, the hood pulled over my head, my veins thrumming with anticipation.
I fucking love this part.
Stalking my prey.
Especially prey as juicy as this.
I call him Rabbit. Giving the targets codenames helps keep a hunter focused on the job instead of the person. Not that considering the person would make this any more difficult. I’ve been looking forward to this for days. My teeth dripped venom just thinking about it. This is fucking desert.
Rabbit exits the pub laughing, all charming with his next victim. He’s always had this ability, the stupid fuck. Had he approached Annie differently, she might have actually liked him.
One more reason to make this extra painful.
I watch them leave hand in hand like a pretty little couple, stopping to kiss every few steps like they can’t keep their hands off each other. I slink out of my hideout, hands in my pockets, my head down under the hood as they round the corner into a dark alley. The girl staggers, but Rabbit is more stable on his feet. I smile in the obscurity. He has no idea what’s coming.
She lets Rabbit cram her against a wall beside a dumpster, shoving his fingers under her skirt, and from there into her cunt. She gasps and grabs his shoulders, lifting her leg to give him more access. Had this been an ordered hit, I might have let them finish first. But I’m not doing this for the Heathen Kings.
I’m doing this for Annie Jones.
The woman is panting hard, her mouth open and her eyes rolled back as I approach her boy toy from behind. The blade shoots down from my side arm, flashing at his throat a second later. He freezes. The girl whimpers in frustration, trying to gyrate on top of his hand and get him moving. I bring my mouth to his ear.
“Have her suck your cock.”
“What the fuck,” he grunts, and the woman opens her eyes, trying to focus. I recognize her from campus, a blonde with extra large lips who applied to get fucked by both Micah and me. We knew it was her because she bragged about it on campus. We also rejected her application, not because she’d made her intentions public and was a chatterbox, but because she wouldn’t pass preliminaries with Micah’s gang of bikers. She was furious for months. The daughter of an important Senator, she didn’t take rejection lightly.
“I won’t give you a second chance, bitch,” I grunt in his ear, my blade poised to split his skin.
“Get on your knees, cunt,” he commands. The Senator’s daughter blinks her long, heavy lashes at him, then at me, trying to make sense of this, but she’s too drunk. Rabbit doesn’t give her any extra time, worried about the consequences any delay might have .
Grabbing her hair, he forces her to bend from her waist, bringing her face to his crotch. The woman falls to her knees to avoid falling on her face, grabbing his thighs.
“Good boy,” I growl. “Now open your fly and shove it down her throat.”
His fingers tangle with his fly nervously. Staring up at us and not understanding much of what’s happening, the Senator’s daughter tries to help him, but he slaps her hands away. Cursing, he finally manages to free his cock, grabs her hair, and forces it deep down her throat. I laugh darkly.
“Look how fast she took you in to your balls.”
He slams his hips forward, trying to get a reaction out of her. She grips his thighs harder for balance, which only drives him to fuck her mouth more viciously, because a woman’s willing submission isn’t his thing.
“You’d much rather have your chums yank her hands behind her back and force her to lick your balls, wouldn’t you?” I let loose a mean chuckle. “It wouldn’t make your dick any bigger, though. ”
“What the fuck do you want?” he manages thickly. That’s the thing when you put these bastards face to face with death and force them to fuck one last time: they get hard like never before, experiencing pleasure like a sort of purgatory before doom.
“I want you to repent, Rainer, for what you did a few days ago.”
He stiffens, and the woman groans, her head bobbing back and forth faster to get him moving again.
“Is this about Annie Jones?”
“It’s about you being a fucking rapist.” Then, closer to his ear. “How about I shove the hilt of my dagger into your ass and fuck some empathy into you while you take the whore’s mouth?”
In a flash, I lock my arm around his neck, pierce his jeans with my blade, and tear down through the fabric, exposing his ass. I flip the dagger in my hand, gripping the blade in my gloved hand, and run it down the seam between his beefy, hairy ass cheeks. He tries to jerk away from it, the woman groaning in protest.
My arm flexes around his neck, and I flip the dagger again .
“Careful, bitch,” I say as I push the tip of the blade between his cheeks. “You wouldn’t want my hand to twitch and cut you. Now, be a good boy and keep fucking her mouth. Don’t make her work for it.”
I grin, knowing that every one of his instincts begs him to jerk away from the menace of my blade right at his ass, but he must act against all that in order to avoid it. The woman’s hands find their way to his backside, her long fingernails digging into his skin. I take a step back just to guide her hands towards his crack.
“Take his asshole with your fingers,” I tell her darkly, in that way I know girls like. She moans at the sound of my voice, her hands obediently following my order. I slowly remove the blade to let her replace it.
“Don’t you fucking dare resist her,” I tell Rainer, taking another step back to enjoy the show. Taking out my phone, I hit rec.
“Ah, our buddies in the group chats are going to have a field day with this one.”
The woman teases his asshole with one and then two of her fingers, while my prey braces his hands on the wall in front of him, grunting like an animal and pumping her face. He whimpers, hating himself for almost coming while being humiliated in front of a camera. My camera. For all of his filthy friends to see.
“My brother is gonna have your fucking head for this,” he cries. He can’t see the malicious snicker on my face, but I’m fucking sure he can hear it in my voice.
“Your brother will come for me anyway. It doesn’t matter what I do to you.”
“Please, jungle snake,” he manages, smart enough not to say my name. “You don’t have to do this. I won’t hunt her down anymore, I promise.”
“I’m gonna need more than that, boy toy.”
“Anything,” he cries as the woman’s fingers tease his asshole.
“You’ll help me track down all the others before they go after her. Make them understand she’s off limits.”
“I’ll do whatever you want, just don’t, don’t, ah, fuck!” His body quakes, and he comes down the Senator’s daughter’s throat, his beefy asscheeks clenching on her fingers. She chokes on his cum, the cobblestones under her knees tearing at her pantyhose as she squirms.
He trickles down the wall and falls down on his ass next to her, his cock out, softening. He doesn’t seem to have the strength left to tuck himself back in. What better way to incapacitate a man when you plan on doing bad things to him?
My role within the Heathen Kings includes using our targets’ psychology against them. Assessing their psychology is Damon’s job, and he’s wicked skilled at it, having been raised like he was, but I enact much of his planning.
Rainer breathes hard, his wolfish face red, his eyes rolled back from pleasure.
“I knew there was a latent submissive in you,” I tell him with a chuckle.
I snap pictures of him slumped against the wall next to that dumpster, looking as wretched as the Senator’s daughter does with his cum around her mouth. Making sure I’ve got enough material on both of them, I tuck away the camera. Rainer’s eyelids move heavily, and he fidgets as I approach .
“If we have a deal, jungle snake, then that footage dies here.”
I tilt my hooded head to the side. “That depends on how well you behave.”
He starts working on his fly, trying to regain some dignity.
“It’s sad that you see an enemy in me,” he says. “Even worse that you made one of my brother. And all for what? Annie Jones?”
I stop, my jaw clenching. “Next time you say her name, make sure it’s with respect. I hear that tone again, and I’ll cut off your fucking tongue.”
He starts getting up on his feet, helping himself with the support of the wall. His clothes are disheveled, his hair a mess, and hatred replaces the confused heat on his face.
“Why are you doing this? Why would the famous jungle snake take so much heat for someone like her?” Then, mirroring the tilt of my head to the side. “What is she to you?”
“The question is,” I reply with a clenched jaw, “what is she to you from now on.” Then, lowering my chin and staring daggers at him from under my hood. “ And the answer is—your chance at life. From now on, you refer to her with respect, and you stay the fuck away from her.”
“So, we have a deal,” he says. I can hear the knot in his throat. “You won’t be showing that video around if I don’t get anywhere near her again.” He motions to where I tucked my phone away. “And I’ll help you take down all those who are after her.”
“We have a deal.” I square my shoulders. “Now, how about a token to seal it?” I flip the knife in my hand, closing the distance between ua. “A small token of your loyalty.”
He presses himself against the wall, his eyes filling with terror as he understands what’s about to happen. But I don’t give him the time to react. A minute later, his screams fill the alleyway, and the Senator’s daughter is running for her life.