Why did people stop building houses like this? I felt like a time traveler in this place, a character out of a Gabaldon novel.
I walked up a narrow darkened staircase, eyes up to see when it would end.
Around another bend in the worn wooden railing, it opened into a room.
Dark wood shelves held rows of books, but this one was smaller than the other libraries. It looked more like an office with a heavy wooden desk placed centrally in the room. A freestanding gold lamp with a red shade on it stood next to the desk. It was furnished in bold jewel tones like the rest of the house; red, oxblood, blue, and jade.
The windows were large, reaching up towards the impossibly high ceiling. A telescope stood by one of them.
Ruarc lived alone but every place I’d explored in the house was always clean, dusted, and beautifully maintained. I’d spied a few maids here and there, but they were the sort not frequently seen or heard. They had to work in the nights for the house to remain this clean without my running into them more frequently.
The mansion held no sign of neglect or disrepair, everything maintained as if time hadn’t touched this place while it ravaged the rest of the earth.
The walls were gently curved in the circular room. Orienting myself with a glance out the peaked stained glass window, I put myself in one of the two turrets.
A soft laugh pressed against the inside of my lips.
Turrets.
Jesus.
I hadn’t believed Ruarc when he told me they were functional and not just decorative. He hadn’t been lying.
Like a lot of the other rooms, there was a fireplace in this one. It was too hot this time of year, but the thought of cozying up in front of a lit fireplace with a book when it was cold enough to do so had me grinning.
Would Ruarc still be keeping me here when it was cold enough for a fire.
I bit my lip, choosing not to think about the future, it never led anywhere good. Not anymore.
My errant thoughts dampened my excitement exploring the room. I didn’t know what was going on anymore.
There had been a week when we barely left his bed. With no sense of time passing or whether it was day or night. We ate when we were hungry, slept when we were tired, and feasted on one another when we woke.
For a while, we only talked about me. He said he preferred it that way, and even though my existence must’ve seemed horribly mundane to him, he never seemed bored.
It was like pulling teeth at first, but one night, after half a bottle of whiskey, he told me about his life. Offering me little glimpses of himself, always stopping just shy of going too deep.
Ruarc told me about the dog he’d rescued, though he never said what happened to it. About Thane, his father for all intents and purposes. About all the situations he and Nixon got themselves in when they were younger.
And then he stopped.
He stopped talking to me. Coming into the room to fuck me stupid and then leave, muttering about having some things he needed to attend to.
Now, for days I’ve woken up alone.
The days were starting to drag.
I could do anything I wanted, provided I didn’t leave.
I was… comfortable. But lonely.
Ruarc still held out on that Netflix subscription and my books hadn’t arrived, but even if he left the front door open and dismissed his guards and turned off the cameras… I wasn’t sure I’d leave. That had to be the most terrifying thought of all.
That I might like being a monster’s captive. That I might choose this over what waited for me back home.
Home.
I shivered thinking of cold nights in my cabin beneath the covers. With only the moaning of the walls to keep me company.
I went to the telescope to see whether I could make anything out. It was dark but the sky was overcast. I carefully maneuvered it, trying to focus on the world outside. Distant footsteps started quiet, then got louder and faster, coming up the stairs. I turned and jumped, starting when I saw him even though I heard him coming.
He filled the wide frame of the door, his shoulders flexing with every heavy breath, every bit the shadow from the cabin again. My ghost come to collect its soul.
Something was wrong.
A tremor rattled down my spine. “Ruarc?”
Did I do something?
He said I could move around the house as I pleased. I didn’t leave the house. The furthest I went were the balconies and the enclosed courtyard. My heart beat wildly, fear I hadn’t felt this strongly for weeks filled my chest.
“Ruarc, what—”
He barreled toward me.
I didn’t run, too stunned to move.
My mind blanked, bracing for impact, but then he was kissing me.
Our teeth collided, his mouth hungry and hard. My body awoke to him, a moan clawing from my throat as my toes curled and my thighs clenched.
He lifted me from my hips, bringing me to the desk. I wrapped my arms around his neck, twisting my fingers in the hair at the base of his neck, but he wrenched me away with a growl.
I gasped as he flipped me around, shoving my head down into the surface of the desk.
“Ruarc,” I gasped, to no response.
He held my wrists together behind my back. I heard his zipper, then he was tugging my shorts down my legs.
I screamed as he pushed roughly past my entrance, my body stretching uncomfortably around him. My eyes closed, holding my breath against the sharp bite of pain. Tears threatened as he withdrew only to slam back into me, my body jerking hard against the unyielding surface with the force of his thrust.
He knocked my legs apart from behind, adjusting his angle to bury himself into me deeper as he fucked me, hard and fast. His violent thrusts rammed my hip bones into the carved edge of the desk, making the items atop it rattle, some of them rolling over its edges.
The repeated blows were in stark contrast with the gathering pleasure in my core.
I panted, arching my back into him as he pressed my cheek harder into the surface. I cried out as he hit something deep inside me, a spot that pulsed with both pain and pleasure with every one of his relentless strokes.
He roared with primal desire, the sounds of his pleasure provoking my own, making my core quicken, nerve endings like tendrils coiling tighter, tighter for the release.
I came with a teeth baring shout, my vision going out for a few seconds before it came roaring back with the hard slap of a hand on my rear.
Ruarc carried on mercilessly between my legs, drawing out my orgasm while I weathered the assault until he suddenly stopped.
My tender flesh throbbed and my arms fell from his hard grip.
“Ruarc, what’s going on?” I asked.
Nothing.
He jerked my bicep, turning me back around, pushing me up onto the edge of the desk, making me catch myself on my palm as he jerked my hips forward, burying himself back into my pussy.
The invasion hurt less this time, my already wet core ready to receive him. Ruarc fucked me wordlessly, his face a mask of desire and anguish as his shadowed eyes flicked to mine.
My heart shook seeing him.
Every thrust was a fervent plea.
Something happened. Something was wrong.
I embraced him, wrapping my arms and legs around him as he rocked his hips into me, letting him take what he needed from my body, no matter how brutal.
Despite myself, my orgasm hit again, making me seize, pulling me away from him. I fell back against the desk, hanging on to the ledge for dear life as he continued his relentless thrusting until he came, swallowing his groan and gritting his teeth. His head tipped back in ecstasy, every vein in his neck bulging. Every sharp angle defined. A phantom backlit in shades of royal blue, red, and yellow from the stained glass window at his back.
He didn’t move for a moment, remaining like that, with his cock in my pussy, warm around him. Neither of us moving.
I pushed up on my elbow, reaching to put a hand to his chest.
His head fell forward, bent to shadow his expression from me.
Finally, he pulled out of me, stuffing his softening erection back into his pants, tucking in his shirt, adjusting his collar. Putting himself back to rights.
Why wouldn’t he look at me?
My stomach twisted as I tugged my shorts back up my legs, ignoring how his seed spilled out onto the soft fabric. I could clean up after.
He walked to the stained glass window, bracing a hand on the frame to look out over the property.
“Do you want to know how I ended up with this house?” he asked finally, his tone an emotionless droll that only served to increase the tension in the room.
“You said you grew up here.”
“I came here when I was twelve or thirteen. The man who owned this house, Thane Monroe, became a father figure of sorts to me. He owned the syndicate that I control now. It became mine when he died and so did the estate.”
Caught off guard by his sudden openness, I ventured a question, desperate to know more about him. Where he came from. How he was made.
“What about before then? When you were a child?”
He paused, drawing air deep into his lungs before speaking.
“My earliest memories are being sat in front of the TV while my mom led a parade of different men into her bedroom by the hand. I think the TV was supposed to be loud enough to drown them out, but it often wasn’t.”
My throat constricted. “Was she…”
“A prostitute? Yes.”
“I’m sorry, that must’ve been difficult to understand as a child.”
…and suddenly some things started to make sense.
“What was awful was when they hit her,” he added, his knuckles turning white as his grip on the window frame tightened. “Watching her cry, seeing her bruises fade from black to purple to yellow. Seeing her stuck in the pattern of prostitution and addiction, unable to get out of either. It was almost a relief when she left.”
“She left?”
A nod. “When I was eleven. Weeks before, one of the johns attacked me. He was trying to—” He cut himself off but I could fill in the blank. My heart sank.
“I fought back. Used a bat. I wasn’t very strong then, but apparently I was strong enough to knock him down. The painted cement statue Ma kept near the front door did the rest, cracked open his skull.”
“That wasn’t your fault. It was a mistake. You did it in self-defense.”
“No,” he argued, the word blunt and honest. “No, I wanted him to die and he did. My mother helped me bury the body the next day in the woods. She told me the man was my… my…”
My hand flew to my mouth, covering the pained gasp there.
…his father?
His own father had tried to rape him?
He killed his father.
“Ruarc…”
I rose to go to him, but he stiffened and I stayed put.
“And then weeks later,” he continued, as if he was telling a story that belonged to someone else instead of the one that shaped him into the man standing in front of me. “I woke up to find a hundred dollars on the kitchen counter and she was gone. Just like that. I didn’t know what to do. Where to go. She had no family here. I had no aunts or uncles. No cousins or even friends.”
My heart bled for him, withering in my chest like a prune.
“A few years back, I found out where she lives and what she does now. She’s an entirely different person. Doesn’t even look the same.”
“Ruarc, that never should’ve happened. Every child deserves a mother—”
“Who didn’t leave? Yeah, that would’ve been preferable.”
He tapped his palm against the wood. Still, he wouldn’t look at me and I got the distinct feeling I shouldn’t approach him. Not yet. Not right now.
“It was easier when Thane died. There was an accident so it was a shock, but he didn’t leave me the way she did. He didn’t want to leave, but he was still gone.”
“I’m so sorry, Ruarc.”
He shook his head, dismissing my apology, finally turning around to face me. His drawn expression unsettled me, the hollows beneath his eyes dark and deep. His skin pale, drained of color.
“Why do you think I have so many cameras in this place, so much security?”
His pause made me think he wanted an answer.
“Because you need to keep yourself safe.”
He shook his head. “No, Emily. I had cameras for Delirium before you arrived. A few for the property.”
That didn’t sound right. There were cameras everywhere. In almost every hall. In my bedroom. My bathroom. The wine cellar turned prison in the basement. Even in this room.
“These,” he said, waving an arm at the two cameras in the library office. “Are here because I couldn’t let you leave.”
He paced, short angry steps, brushing past me to rip one from the wall and discard it on the floor. The crash of it shattering against the hardwood made me jump and my breath catch. I gripped the edge of the desk to keep myself rooted to the spot, not wanting to flee. Not wanting to show fear.
He whirled on me, his dead-eyed gaze suddenly blazing with life.
“I was obsessed with you from the moment we met,” he all but shouted. “I knew I had to have you. Bringing you here, I knew it wasn’t what you would want. I knew you would try to escape so I did everything in my power to stop that. I wanted you for myself.”
He paused again, taking a shallow breath, regaining control.
“Your father gave me the perfect excuse to take you, bring you here, make you mine.”
He threw a hand through his hair. “But you were right. Nixon was in on the price hikes, harassing your weakling of a father into asking for higher disposal fees. Fees that Nixon got a handsome cut of.”
“I-I don’t understand,” I muttered, more to myself than to him.
I was right? But if Nixon was the one to blame for my father’s so-called greed then…
“I wanted to teach the undertaker a lesson, remind him who he was dealing with, but he had nothing to do with it. At best, he was Nixon’s pawn.”
I didn’t like where this was going. A hollow cavern opened in my stomach.
“I’m sorry you had to find out that way. I hoped I was wrong.”
He cocked his head at me, brows lowering over narrowed eyes that watched me for a long, silent moment, analyzing.
He stalked toward me suddenly, without warning. I held my ground as he yanked open a drawer next to where I stood and plucked out a familiar gray bag.
“Where did you get that?” I asked.
He held the purse out to me and I took it, feeling weight inside. Unfastening the silver clasp, I found my phone, wallet, and a change of clothes folded neatly inside.
“You need to leave.”
His words hung in the air for a long time before I could process them.
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want you here.”
The rejection stung like needles in my eyes. My tongue was a useless lump in my mouth. Numbly, I shook my head.
“If Nixon’s the problem, then why do I need to go?”
“Get the fuck out of here, Emily,” he snapped at me. “We’re ten minutes west from the mortuary. You can walk if you want or one of my men will drive you.”
Frantic thoughts tumbled over each other in my head, words still failing me. He was… he was letting me go?
No. He was kicking me out.
“What if… I want to stay.”
“No.” He glared sharply at me and something within me crumpled. “I got what I wanted, little lamb.” He sneered. “Now it’s time for you to go home.”
“I’m not leaving,” I said, my shaking voice giving away my hurt.
He laughed mockingly, pushing a palm over his mouth. “Let me make this easy for you, Emily. If you’re still on my property in ten minutes, I’m going to kill you.”
My mouth popped open, his cruel words like the twist of a knife, wringing scalding tears from my eyes.
I was so stupid. So fucking foolish to think…
What? That we were a couple?
Was I exempt from his cruelty because we had fucked a few times?
I was his captive. He was my jailer.
I was his pawn on his chess board and he was moving the pieces.
My body caved in on itself, shocked betrayal burning in my core.
Ruarc walked out, leaving me in devastated silence.
I dried my eyes and stood, legs shaking as something that felt more like rage than sorrow fought for dominance in my core.
My monster had returned.
“Fuck you!” I shouted after the sound of his retreating footsteps.
My menace.
“I hate you!”
My ghost.
