Scarlett #4
I stumble deeper into the glass maze, palms leaving sweaty smears on the mirrors as I turn corner after corner. My own face mocks me—cheeks wet, lips trembling, eyes wide with the terror I won’t speak aloud.
Every reflection is a liar.
A whisper of leather creaks somewhere to my right. A shadow skims the glass on my left. I whip around, and it’s only me again, multiplied a hundredfold.
“Run faster,” Kai’s voice croons through the dark. “If you don’t, I’ll have to drag you down.”
My breath hitches. My shoes slap the warped tiles as I push forward, frantic. Lights flicker overhead, painting me in stuttering flashes of red and white.
The mirrors twist my image taller, thinner, broken. In one pane, I look like I’m already caught, his hand around my throat, my mouth open in a silent scream. I slap the glass—shatter nothing. Just a cruel trick of the funhouse.
“Do you feel it?” His voice coils closer, teasing, cruel. “Your heart breaking itself against your ribs. Your thighs clenching, trying to hide what you really want me to see.”
I shake my head hard, strands of hair sticking to my damp cheeks. Silent. Then—footsteps. Slow. Heavy. Definite.
One reflection shifts. Not me. Broader. Darker. A silhouette bleeding through the glass.
My breath tears out of me, a soundless sob, as I lunge deeper into the maze, mirrors rattling as my shoulder smashes against them. The sound of his laugh follows, low and sure, like he already knows there’s no exit.
I take one more wrong turn, breath hitching, my palms slipping on the cold glass. My reflection breaks into twenty frantic Scarletts, all trembling, all with nowhere left to run.
And then I feel it.
The wall of heat behind me. His body blocking the narrow path, his reflection slides in behind mine until the mirror swallows us whole.
“Game over.” The words are low, steady, almost kind. They make my skin crawl worse than a shout.
I spin too fast, stumble back, and slam shoulder-first into the mirror. He doesn’t lunge. He doesn’t need to. His presence eats the air, and I can’t breathe around it.
His hand finds the glass beside my head, knuckles grazing my hair as he leans in. The mirrors trap me between his reflection and his body, leaving me nowhere to look but at him.
“Ran yourself right into me,” he whispers, voice sharp silk. “Tell me, little rabbit… did you want to be caught?”
I shake my head — too fast, too desperate — but the sound that breaks out of me betrays me, ragged and high and nothing like no.
His other hand lands on my hip. Not pushing yet, just holding. Heavy. Certain.
“You stayed silent,” Kai murmurs, his lips brushing my ear. “But your silence screamed louder than begging ever could.”
The glass chills my spine. His heat burns my front. I’m caught between fire and ice, and there’s no way out.
The mirror bites into my back as his hand slams flat against the glass beside my head, rattling it in its frame. The sound makes me flinch, but he’s already crowding in closer, chest crushing mine, thigh forcing its way between my legs until the denim drags against me, cruel and deliberate.
“Thought you could hide?” His breath scorches my ear, his voice dark silk and gravel. “Thought silence would save you?”
I gasp, shaking my head, but the sound breaks into a whimper when he grinds his thigh higher, forcing me to ride it. My hands fly to his chest, not to push him away, but because I need something to hold as my knees go weak.
Kai smirks, lips ghosting my jaw, dragging lower, grazing teeth against the pulse hammering in my throat. “Look at you. Trembling. Soaked through. All that running just to end up dripping on me.”
His fingers seize my wrists, pinning them hard above my head against the mirror, the angle arching me helplessly against him. His hips press forward, his hardness grinding into my stomach as he rocks deliberately, slow, cruel, making sure I feel every inch of his arousal.
“Tell me you don’t want this,” he whispers, brushing his mouth over mine, not kissing, just hovering. “Lie to me, little sister. Spit in my face. I’ll still make you grind on me until you’re crying for it.”
The words tear a sob out of me, shame and heat colliding until I can’t tell which hurts worse.
The mirror fogs with our breath. His grip on my wrists bruises. His thigh shoves higher between mine, dragging a moan from my throat I can’t swallow down.
And he laughs — low, filthy, victorious.
The glass digs into my spine, cool and merciless, while his hand tightens at my hip. He shifts just enough that his thigh slides between mine, lifting me a fraction, forcing my body to cling. My gasp fogs the mirror, another Scarlett staring back wide-eyed, mouth parted.
“See her?” Kai’s whisper brushes my temple. “That’s you. My filthy little rabbit caught in her own reflection. Pretend all you want, Scar—your body already told me the truth.”
He presses harder, dragging me against the muscle of his thigh until the seam of my jeans bites. My nails scrape the glass behind me.
“You hear that?” His lips hover near my ear, warm, taunting. “That’s you soaking through denim. That’s you begging without words.”
My throat burns. “Stop—”
“You don’t want me to stop.” His hand snakes higher, fingers brushing just beneath the hem of my shirt, knuckles rough on bare skin. “You want me to press until you can’t breathe, until every mirror in this room shows you breaking for me.”
His thigh shifts again, cruel, deliberate. The sound I make echoes in the hall of glass, multiplied until I can’t tell which version of me it belongs to.
“Say it,” Kai growls, grinding me down harder. “Say you wanted to be caught.”
“Say you wanted to be caught,” he growls, dragging me harder against him, the mirrors rattling with the force.
My nails claw at the glass, every nerve lit, but I bare my teeth at him anyway, spitting fury through the haze.
“Fuck you, Kai. You think this is me begging? You think this is me wanting you? You’re sick. You don’t want me—you just don’t want anyone else to have me.”
His eyes flash, dark and sharp, but I don’t stop, words spilling like poison between gasps.
“You wanted to be the good brother, right? So fucking be my brother. Let me go. Stop pretending this is about me when it’s always been about you.”
The words hang like broken glass between us. My chest heaves, my throat raw, every reflection showing a girl cornered and spitting venom at the only boy she can’t escape.
He doesn’t move at first. Just breathes, ragged, so close I can feel the storm in his chest. His hand digs harder into my waist, like if he lets go, I’ll vanish.
Then, softer than I expect, rougher than I can handle, he whispers—
“Careful, Scar. You don’t get to set me on fire and tell me to put it out.”
The moment the words leave me, he moves. Fast. Brutal. The glass jolts as he spins me, slams me against another mirror so hard the warped reflection fractures into a dozen distorted versions of myself—every one of them spread, desperate, trembling.
“You want me to be your brother?” Kai snarls, breath hot on the back of my neck. His palm flattens low on my stomach, dragging me tight against him. “Then why are you dripping for me like this, Scar?”
I choke on air. My reflection stares back with wild eyes, legs forced open by the press of his knee. Another mirror angles it crueller, showing the way his fingers trace higher, filthy, claiming. I can’t escape it—every angle shows what he’s doing to me, what I’m letting him do.
“Look,” he hisses, forcing my chin toward the nearest panel, my cheek smashing into the cold glass. “Look at yourself. Every dirty angle. Every filthy secret. You hate me, but your body fucking worships me.”
His hand slides down, rough, shameless, pressing until my breath breaks into a sob. I see it from above, from the side, from everywhere at once—the mirrors making it inescapable.
“This is what you asked for in the car, wasn’t it? To forget? To pretend? Well, baby sister, there’s no forgetting this.” His teeth graze my ear, his hips grind mercilessly into me. “Every mirror in this place is going to remember you.”
The glass fogs, the air shatters with my broken sound, and his laugh—low, cracked, filthy—fills the funhouse.
My reflection stares back at me, glass fractured into a dozen versions of the same shame—wide eyes, parted lips, cheeks wet with sweat and heat. His grip pins me in place, immovable, my wrists trapped against the mirror while his thigh keeps me straddled.
“Look at you,” Kai hisses, voice low enough to crawl beneath my skin. “Every angle, every copy of you spread out like a fucking gallery, and not one of them can hide what you are when I touch you.”
“Stop—” My protest breaks in the middle, thin and weak.
He grinds me down harder, lips brushing my ear like a curse.
“You keep saying stop, but your body keeps saying more. Which one should I believe, baby?”
I squeeze my eyes shut, but his voice follows me into the dark.
“Open them. Look. That’s not your brother making you shake.” His breath sounds ragged as he pushes me harder into the glass. “Because I’m not your brother. I’ve never been. And deep down you’ve always fucking known it.”
My eyes fly open, and there he is behind me in the reflection—eyes blazing blue fire, jaw clenched, mouth at my throat, my body trembling against his. His words sink claws into the space where my shame lives, dragging me closer to the edge I swore I wouldn’t fall from.
“You want the truth?” he whispers, filthy and cruel. “The only thing I’ve ever wanted to be is the boy who ruins you.”
The glass is cold against my back, his heat scorching everywhere else. I shake my head, but the words slip out anyway, splintered and trembling.
“I don’t… I don’t want you to be my brother.”
It’s barely a whisper, so soft I almost pray the mirrors will swallow it. But I feel the way his body stills against mine, like the universe stopped breathing.
“Say it again,” Kai growls, his voice not human anymore, raw and jagged.