Present
I leaned over the bathtub, my hands gripping the sides and hovering less than a foot from her mouth as I watched her masturbate.
Jesus Christ. She was beautiful.
And mine. All mine whether she fucking liked it or not. She’d do this for me. Only for me from now on.
A lock of hair spilled down her face, getting sucked between her lips and back out again every time she panted.
Mine. This was why I tolerated Arion. Because her little sister was my favorite little cunt. God, look at her.
Her body waving and hips rolling, her tits bouncing, her legs spread wide and hanging over the rim of the tub… The trickle of water teased her little clit, and I ran my tongue across the backside of my teeth, wanting to be the water and taste what it tasted and do to her what it was doing.
She danced even when she wasn’t on her feet.
She rode it out, fucking and coming as she threw her head back and moaned, and I dropped my eyes down her body, remembering all that I had touched and taking in the new in all the years that had passed. The same taut tummy and toned thighs. The same tight, round ass and tits, nipples poking straight out and built to be sucked.
But her hair was longer now, a few more muscles in her stomach and legs, and her pussy… The tightest thing I’d ever been inside of. She was a woman. I wouldn’t have to be gentle with her this time.
I raised my eyes to her face again, cocking my head and watching her eyebrows etched in pleasure and pain and wanting to kiss her so I could taste the sweat above her top lip.
Did she think about me? Did she do this a lot? Was she dying for it that badly? Did it feel as good as having a man between her legs?
It had been so long since I was spent like she looked now.
She lowered herself back into the tub, tucking her knees up to her chest again, and calmed her breathing.
No, do it again. My dick was so hard, and if I slid it inside her right now, how wet would she be? God, what was she doing to me? Do it again.
“I know you’re there,” she said.
And I shot my eyes up to her eyes, seeing her stare off at nothing, serene and resolute.
“And now you know…” she went on. “I always close my eyes when I come.”
I remained there, the fire in my body a moment ago now turning to ice. She knew I was here. She’d known from the start. I thought it was odd she left the door open. I just assumed she thought she was alone in the house. Can’t fault me for watching what happens in plain sight.
But she planned this.
And I raised my hand, bringing it to her face, claws bent and starving to grab her pretty little neck, but…I drew back. Provoking me was her goal, and that was not how you were going to wind up in my bed, little Winter.
She thought she was strong. She thought she could play with me.
She could try. I had you once. I’ll have you again.
I rose silently and stood there as she finally got out of the tub, wrapping herself in a towel, and left the bathroom. I quietly followed, stopping just outside the bathroom door and watching as she trailed down the hallway, no turn of the head to hear if anyone was behind her and no fear that anything was at her back, and entered her bedroom, closing the door behind her.
I inhaled a deep breath, feeling the silence of the house and anticipation for the long nights ahead. Ari and her mother were gone.
Her father was gone.
All the ducks in a row.
Walking into my room, I shut the door, seeing Mikhail’s head pop from where he’d been asleep on the bed. He jumped to his feet, wagging his tail and tongue hanging out of his mouth.
I couldn’t help but quirk a smile as I dug into my pocket for a treat. He gobbled it out of my hand, and I petted him with the other, stroking his blond head. Amazing how some animals knew not to bite the hand that fed them while others couldn’t deny their nature to be what they were.
“I can’t sleep, boy,” I told him, smoothing both hands over his head now. “It’s not so complicated for an animal, is it? Why can’t the things I need be basic?”
Or physical?
I wanted to fuck. I wanted it slow, feeling her fear, her desire, and her mouth giving back what I gave to her.
But I needed her mind.
“It’s all in my head,” I muttered.
The control. The memories. The knowledge that our bodies betray us, and it was the brain that was the prize. That the mind knew what we really wanted, not the body.
“Wake up!” I whisper, shaking Banks. “Get up!”
She lifts her head, still half-asleep. “What? Huh?”
I rip the covers off her and grab her wrist, pulling her out of my bed. It’s like dragging a five-year-old. My sister is fourteen, but she’s still so lanky and skinny compared to me, and I’m only a year older than her. My boxers and T-shirt hang on her like drapes.
Footfalls hit the stairs outside my bedroom, and I’d forgotten to lock the door.
I shove Banks into the closet, and she sits down, knowing the drill. I put my headphones on her, metal music playing. “Don’t come out until I get you,” I tell her.
And I shut the door just as my bedroom door creaks open.
My mother, barefoot and dressed in a deep purple slip and robe, enters my room, a surprised look on her face when she sees me still awake.
She smiles and locks my bedroom door before heading across the room to me.
“You’re still up?” she asks, the musical tone to her voice making me wince.
It sounds surreal, because it has no place in what happened in this room. Nothing is happy or innocent.
She approaches, putting her hands on my face and patting my skin to feel for a temperature or some shit, but the touch turns intimate. A languorous drag of her fingertips. How her hand softly falls down my neck. How she stands close enough her breasts graze my bare chest through her nightie.
“Trouble sleeping?” she asks. And then smiles, teasing me. “Someone needs their sleeping pill.”
My sleeping pill. Because it’s medicinal for growing boys to have their dicks milked by their mothers.
She caresses my face and shoulders, looking up at me like I’m still eleven and always her boy.
“I can take care of anything my son needs.” She smiles and comes in, wrapping her arms around my neck. “Such a beautiful boy. You’re going to be a powerful man someday.”
She presses her body into mine, and I close my eyes, trying to go to that place I always go. Where I can pretend she’s someone else. A girl at school. Some chick in my class.
My mother is still young, only sixteen when she had me, so her skin is still tight from youth and years of dancing, her black hair is long and soft, she smells good…
I’ve had sex with others. Girls around town. Women my father keeps. I can do this.
And if I want it to stop, who will I tell anyway? My father won’t care. No one will, and telling will make him angry and make people laugh at me. I’d be weak and an embarrassment to him.
I can’t tell.
This isn’t a big deal. My mother isn’t unusual. Men look at Banks the same way my mother looks at me. That’s why I hide my sister. So they won’t go after her.
I see so much shit, and I don’t know if it’s wrong, but it never ends, and I’ve gotten used to everything that happens in the late hours. Maybe it happens everywhere and nobody talks about it.
But she rubs her hand over my dick through my jeans, and I just can’t.
“No, stop,” I growl, stumbling back. “I don’t want to.”
I don’t fucking want to. I won’t tell, but I’m not doing shit I don’t want to do anymore.
But she protests, “Damon.”
She advances on me but stops, and looks down at the floor. Picking up her foot, she inspects the smears staining the wood. “Is that… blood?” she asks me and reaches down, lifting the ankle of my jeans and seeing the blood soaked into the hem. “Oh, my God, what have you done?”
Not enough, apparently. I’d completely forgotten about the cuts once she walked in, because the broken skin wasn’t enough pain to mask the shit she brought with her.
Taking my hand, she drags me into the bathroom adjoining my bedroom and pushes me back against the countertop, lifting up my foot.
“Are these cuts?” she exclaims.
Like you’re shocked. She knows what I’ve been doing for years now. The cuts I hide under my feet. The scars under my arms and hair. The slices, pricks, and burns that are covered under my boxers until they heal and then I do it all over again. I’d gotten creative in hiding the shit I did to release pain.
She wets a washcloth and pushes me back more, so I sit on the counter, and lifts my foot.
But I jerk away. “I can do it!”
She slaps me, and my head jerks to the side, the sting of her hand burning across my face like fire and ice. I close my eyes, grateful for it. A cool sweat breaks out all over me.
“There, there, now,” she soothes like I’m five. “You don’t need to talk. Remember what we said? You don’t need to talk. I always know what you need.”
She wipes up the blood, applies Band-Aids to the five slices I made, and checks the other foot, sighing in relief that it wasn’t injured.
“You need to be careful,” she tells me. “The basketball team needs you. You can’t hurt your feet like that.”
That was why I did it. It didn’t hurt my game at all. If anything, I played harder and faster, so the pain of running on that court would exhaust me, so I couldn’t think or fight when I came home.
“Better?” she asks.
She doesn’t wait for my answer, though. Coming in, she wraps her arms around me again, kissing my cheek and trailing more over my jaw and mouth.
“Such a good boy,” she whispers. “So much energy. So physical.” Her hands move over my body as her kisses get wetter and longer. “So much endurance and muscle. So much power.” And then her hand reaches between my legs, massaging my cock. “Such a good, growing boy.”
I grip the back of her hair, and she moans as my fingers dig into her scalp and I stare at my reflection in the glass shower door.
Bitch.
Slut.
Pussy.
Nothing but a fuck.
“Rachel Kensington’s mother called me,” she says, licking, kissing, and panting against my neck. “She said she found you and her daughter half naked on their couch last night.”
I take her waist in my other hand, kneading the flesh through the silk, never blinking as I stare at myself and letting all the emotions rip through me.
Anger.
Shame.
Fear.
Violence.
Pain.
Sadness.
Helplessness.
They float through, jumbling together until I can’t identify one from the other, and it’s not even me in the reflection anymore. Everything in my brain leaves, my mind turns off, and my hands stop shaking. I’m just a body.
This is me.
I am me.
“She was glad nothing serious had happened,” my mother goes on.
Rachel who?
“Oh, sweetie,” she coos. “I understand. Boys will be boys, and she teased you, didn’t she? She wouldn’t let you have it.”
I dig my fingers into her skull, squeezing her hip tighter.
“Shhh,” she says, trying to pull away from my hold. “Little girls just don’t understand what boys need. It’s okay. I’m here.” Her lips trailed a line across my jaw, mewling as she tries to get my grip off her hair.
“You can pretend I’m her,” she tells me, my dick growing hard and hot with blood. “Show me what you were going to do to her. Show me how you wanted to fuck that silly little girl.”
No, no, no…
“Show me,” she urges. “Fuck me.”
No…
“Take what’s yours,” she growls. “Give that girl what she deserves.”
I suck in a breath, tears springing to my eyes, and I jump off the counter, swing around, grab her by the back of the neck, and bend her over the counter.
She spreads her legs and pulls up her nightie for me, bites her bottom lip. “That’s my boy.”
I hold her head right in front of the mirror, staring at her as she challenges me back.
“Do it, baby,” she whispers. “Come all inside me. Come on, come on, come on…”
And I glare at her, tighten my hold on her hair and neck, press her into the counter, and pull her head up—
She gasps, ready to get it.
And I shove her head into the mirror as hard as I can, splintering the glass, and she screams.
“Damon!” she cries out, but I can’t stop.
A wave of euphoria washes over me, and I don’t know why my cheeks are wet, but my muscles are charged, and I just want her to fucking die.
I growl, bringing her head down again and again, blood covering the mirror, and then I haul her up, her body limp and blood pouring down her face, and I hit her, sending her flying to the floor.
She coughs and sputters, and tears stream down my face, but in that moment, I knew.
It would never happen again.
This never had to happen again. I’d kill her if I had to.
Seeing something out of the corner of my eye, I look over my shoulder, seeing Banks standing there with my headphones in her hand.
She looks from my mother on the floor—bloody and weak—to me, her eyes scared.
I rush over, grab her hand, and run from the room. She doesn’t ask questions as I pull her down the stairs, through the house, and out the back doors, into the backyard.
The moon casts a glow over the hedge maze, and we dive in, knowing our way well and finding the fountain immediately.
We climb in and settle behind the water, just like I had done a thousand times before, only once with a girl other than my sister. Banks doesn’t ask me what happened or what I’m going to do. She knows not to talk in here.
Reaching under the groove of the bowl above us, I dig out the silver barrette with pink crystals I hide there, and wrap my fist around it, remembering Winter Ashby’s words from so long ago in that fountain.
Your body can only feel one pain at a time.
She was right. I’ve found that to be true.
But instead of hurting myself to mask pain with more pain, tonight I learned something else.
Hurting others is just as effective.
My mother left after that beating. An hour later, Banks and I had gone back to my room to find her gone, and we fell asleep on the bed, leaving the door unlocked, because we knew. We couldn’t stop the world from happening to us. We could only react.
By morning, my mother was gone, and I never asked where. And as time passed, my father made no effort bring her home again. I didn’t see her until a couple of years later.
And I dealt with it for good that night.
Just like I was going to deal with Winter and the false hope she nearly destroyed me with.
“I want her to want it,” I told Mikhail, his brown eyes looking up at me expectantly. “I want her to want me, to give me her heart, and be my soft, sweet, smiling Little Devil, clutching at me and unable to stop herself.” My heart quickened. “And then I want her to hate herself for it. To turn against herself and hate that she likes it, so she knows she’s weak and pathetic and no different than any other bitch. That she wasn’t special.”
Once I see her as just like everyone else, I’ll have destroyed her and killed my obsession with her. I would’ve killed her power over me, just like Natalya’s.
“And I think she wants to play this game with me,” I joked with the animal.
A knock sounded on the door.
“Come,” I called.
The door opened and closed, and then I heard Crane’s voice behind me.
“She’s inquiring about the dog, sir.”
“Tell her the truth,” I said, smoothing the animal’s fur. “She doesn’t have one anymore.”
“She says there were sounds in the house this morning, too,” he pointed out. “Man-made sounds after you left. She got scared, ran, and went to St. Killian’s.”
“How’d she do that?”
“Uber,” he answered.
I scoffed. Jesus. I never thought of that. Woman was certainly self-sufficient.
But I remembered the first part he said. Noises?
“You think she’s overreacting?” I asked him.
“I don’t know. She seemed very sure,” he explained. “I can install cameras and an alarm system.”
“No,” I told him. “Take on more men. Two details of four each.”
“Yes, sir. She’ll be safe.”
“From everyone but me,” I clarified.
“Yes, sir.”
She was probably just overly alert. Thanks to me.
But she also mentioned a visitor at Bridge Bay Theater days ago. Someone who came into the bathroom and scared her. She thought it was me.
It wasn’t.
This house should have better security, but I didn’t like cameras or video. I’d learned the hard way to not leave evidence.
And given our affluent neighborhood and the low crime rate, Winter’s father never saw fit to arm the house with an alarm system, at the very least. Maybe I’d add one eventually. Right now, I liked coming and going quickly.
“And, sir?” Crane prodded.
“What is it?”
“Her phone’s been ringing downstairs,” he told me, approaching my side. “Would you like me to give it her or…?”
I glanced to where he held it out for me, amused at his coy attempt to give me her phone but still remain innocent in the matter.
I took it.
He left, and I turned it on, seeing it was armed with a pattern passcode. I couldn’t get into it, but there were several notifications visible just on her lock screen.
Mostly from Rika.
An article in the town paper about Winter’s performance last night.
Talk on social media and some videos. Lots of shares and comments as the video spread outside of our town.
I squeezed the phone. She didn’t think she was getting out of here, did she?
And then I expanded a text from Rika. It was a screenshot of a Twitter comment on the video of Winter dancing:
This girl should be everywhere! Why isn’t she touring?
Rika texted below the image:
What she said! Need some sponsors? I might know a few. Let’s talk.
I gritted my teeth together, barking at the dog. “Kom-yen ya!”
He scurried to my side as I left the room, and I carried the phone downstairs and dropped it on the foyer table. I whipped open the front door, charging out of the house.
Fuckin’ Rika.
“Stay,” I told Crane who stood in the driveway, washing the other car. “She doesn’t leave.”
He nodded, and I jumped in my car, the dog taking the passenger seat. I sped off, kicking it into high gear in less than five seconds.
Goddamn her.
My ex-friends were the only people who could protect those in Winter’s life I threatened, and that’s why I needed Rika on my side. Seemed she was tired of waiting for me to keep my end of the bargain, though, so she was trying to undo hers.
She gave me Winter. Now she was trying to take her away.
I stepped into the large hall, hanging back in the shadows as lots of activity happened around the room. I’d missed this place. Hunter-Bailey was a nice club to relax because it was geared for men and didn’t allow women.
Other than one.
After some digging, I’d found out Rika had installed two bouting nights per week at Hunter-Bailey for fencing, and one of them was tonight. It had always been a hobby of hers, as well as collecting swords and various kinds of daggers, and while no other woman was permitted on the premises, Rika could come and go as she pleased as long as she was covert about it. The perks of having a star athlete fiancé for the Meridian City Storm, and a future father-in-law who owned a large fraction of the city.
Boxers went at it in a ring to the left, some worked out, and others lounged on chairs with drinks, chatting it up. I followed the sound of foils clanging together and veered to the other room off to the right and entered, seeing more chairs occupied, a full bar, and members in the middle of the room dueling it out, dressed in their white protective gear and helmets.
I spotted Rika right away. Her body was unmistakable in the tight pants.
She lunged for her opponent, landing her point right in his heart, and I heard him growl and back away before setting himself up again.
I wanted to go over there and drag her off now, but I wasn’t supposed to be in here, Michael having had them cancel my membership two years ago. I was barely able to sneak in at all.
I watched the way she stepped and retreated, rolling her wrists and swinging her arm. Like choreography. Methodical. It was like chess with strategy, but also like a dance. Graceful and statuesque.
I wasn’t sure how long I stood there, leaning against the wall and watching her, but she finished, and I didn’t even know if she’d won. Keeping her mask on, she put up her foil, and walked to the other side of the room, ascending the stairs.
I followed.
They didn’t have a female locker room here—or they didn’t the last time I was here—so I imagined she changed in a private room.
I climbed the two flights of stairs, and once at the third floor, I stepped quietly down the hallway. Doors lined both sides and I was unsure of where she went.
There were offices, a library, a few bedrooms, and on the right, I passed a billiards room, the door open and Rika leaning on the pool table with her back to me. I stopped, seeing her staring at a collection of weapons hung on the wall.
“Michael didn’t want me to come tonight,” she said.
I smiled to myself. Couldn’t sneak up on her anymore.
“He knew you knew my routine,” she continued. “But lately, and with as happy as I am with so much in my life, the bouts are the only time I feel like I’m sure of what I’m doing anymore. The only time my strike is sure. I couldn’t miss it.”
She stood up and turned around, still dressed in her fencing gear minus the helmet. Her hair was up in a ponytail, and she looked down at the pool table, absently rolling the pink ball back and forth.
“You know, after our meeting at the club that night,” she told me, “I started reading up on chess. I mean, I knew how to play. My father made sure of it. But I wasn’t very clever with it.”
I approached the table, listening.
“I thought each piece’s power increased based on its proximity to the king, but that’s not true.” She looked up at me. “Other than the queen, the most powerful player is—”
“The rook,” I said.
She nodded. “Yes.”
“So you’re finally ready to begin?” I asked, pouring myself a glass of bourbon.
But she just turned around, looking back at the wall of weapons. “The game has already begun.”
My pulse throbbed harder in my neck as I carried my drink to the table. I lived for this shit.
But while I liked my games, intrigue, and going wild, I didn’t like doing it alone. I wanted someone on my side. I wanted her on my side.
“All of this is mine,” she said, gesturing to the wall of weapons and turning her head to meet my eyes. “It’s only taken me a few months to gather it. Some purchased, some traded, and some borrowed from private collections.”
She turned back around, studying it again, and I stared at the back of her head as I took a swig of the alcohol.
“The curator of the Menkin Museum would love to have this for her weapons exhibit next summer,” she explained. “And I’m prepared to let her have it in exchange for a favor from her husband, whenever I choose to call it in.”
A favor? Who was her husband?
She paused and then clarified, “Her soon-to-be police commissioner husband, Martin Scott.”
I blinked long and hard, anger winding its way through my stomach.
Martin Scott.
As in Emory Scott.
The girl with the abusive—police officer—older brother whom Kai and Will were sent to prison for assaulting as payback for beating up on his little sister.
The little sister who wasn’t little anymore and who Will was still obsessed with.
He hated us, and was now more powerful than ever.
Rika shot up, grabbed a sword off the wall, and whipped around, holding it at her side and pinning me with a stare. “And guess where he plays billiards every Friday night?” she taunted.
Goddammit. My hand tightened around the glass.
“See, the thing I always wondered about was,” she said, circling the table, and I did the same, glass in hand. “Kai and Will served time for assaulting Martin Scott, but…” She eyed me. “They weren’t the only ones there. Someone was filming.”
You little shit.
“And that’s like… aiding and abetting, right?” she asked.
The glass shattered in my fist, and I felt the sting of a cut as the liquid spilled and the shards fell to the ground.
She just smirked at me, a glint in her blue eyes. “Queen takes rook.”
You fucking bitch.
“Fucking little monster,” I muttered, breathing lava out of my nose.
“Kai and Will protected you,” she stated, fighting not to smile. “That charge along with the statutory rape charge? You would still be in prison. If Martin Scott were to find out…
“There’s no proof.”
“There’s Kai and Will,” she fired back. “And they’re mad at you right now.”
Goddamn her. Martin Scott knew it was me filming his much-deserved beat-down, but without a reason for Will and Kai to be silent about my part in it anymore, all I had was Rika. She pulled the strings.
She circled the table, held up the sword, and pointed it at me. “You will not force her,” she ordered her terms. “You will not threaten, torture, or coerce her into your bed. You will not touch her.”
I shot out my hands, planting them on the pool table and leaning over it to look her in the eyes. “And if she wants me to touch her?”
“It’s good to dream big, Damon.”
I almost snorted, but I couldn’t contain my smile. “God, you’re like a female version of me,” I said. “It’s turning me on.”
“Makes sense. You love yourself best.”
I stood upright again, brushing off my hands. She was exquisite, and if she weren’t working against me, I’d think she was brilliant.
Smart. Tough. Clever.
And cold when she needed to be.
Cold.
“The queen,” I mused, rolling a ball on the table as a memory came to mind. “The snow queen.”
She thinned her eyes, probably confused.
“Years ago,” I explained, “when your father brought his young bride here from South Africa, I’m told my father was quite enamored of her. She reminded him of the beautiful snow queen from the Nutcracker ballet.” I tipped my chin down, casting her a knowing look. “And that’s what he called her. His little snow queen.”
She growled and lunged, and I shot backward just as she slammed the sword on the table. Leaping onto the table, she forwent charging around it to chase me, and hopped off, going straight for me.
Did she not like me insinuating my father got inside her mother’s panties?
She swung for my legs, but I stomped my foot on the sword, knocking it out of her hand, and threw her down on the floor, pressing her shoulders into the wood.
Her face was red with fury.
“The queen is the most valuable player,” I told her, “but to win, she’s not the last one standing. Her job…” I paused, arching an eyebrow, “is to protect the king.”
She pulled out a knife from somewhere and pressed the side of the blade into my neck.
Jesus. She must be fun in bed.
I grinned. “You won’t hurt me.”
“And why not?”
“Because we’re friends.”
“You don’t know the meaning of the word!” she snapped. “You don’t care about me!”
“I would kill for you,” I shot back, getting in her face.
The incredulous look on her face, like she didn’t know if she should be touched or laughing, mimicked exactly what was happening in my head right now.
Yes.
It kind of just came out, but I thought it was true. At one time, I would’ve killed for Michael, Kai, and Will. I might still.
But I’d definitely kill for Erika and Banks. They may not like me a whole lot, but they understood me.
I pushed her knife off my neck and looked down at her.
“Now I’m impressed, but you’re on the wrong side,” I told her.
And then I reached into my breast pocket and pulled out the flash drive with the information Alex had retrieved. The proof I said I would get in exchange for the information on Winter’s father Rika got for me.
She looked at me, realization crossing her eyes and all the anger leaving her face as she took it from my hand.
Getting off her, I sat down next to her. “There’s more coming. Gimme a few days.”
“It’s bad?” she asked, turning her head to look at me.
“It’s exactly what I told you last year,” I said. “I told you I don’t lie. Evans Crist—and my father—had yours killed.”
It was something I’d picked up over years of accidently overhearing conversations in my house, and I’d had Alex working Evans Crist—Michael’s father—and gathering security cam footage and bank statements that I knew he kept just in case, so he could hold it over my father if he ever needed to.
“Your father was involved?” Rika asked. “Why yours?”
It was a good question, and one I wasn’t sure how to answer yet. It was obvious why Evans wanted to get rid of Schraeder Fane. They were friends, and Evans had power of attorney over his friend’s estate in case anything happened. And Evans saw his chance. He wanted to marry Rika off to his son Trevor when she grew up, so the Fane fortune would be theirs. He knew Schraeder had no plans to allow his daughter to marry too young, though, and he knew Rika’s mother was much more pliable.
As for my father helping, I had no idea why. He wasn’t getting anything out of it. Maybe just a favor?
“I don’t know that yet,” I told her.
She sat up, and I watched her stare at the drive as she fingered the scar on her neck. The one she got when she was thirteen in the car accident that killed her father because his brakes had been cut. Gabriel and Evans didn’t expect her to be in the car that day, but thank goodness she lived.
Because I needed her and we had shit to do.
