“Now here is what I would like you to do,” he crouched. “I want you to strip bare, drag this chair beside Daph’s bed, and put your ass in it. Then, I want you to take my belt and lay it over your lap. Think you could do that?”
“Why?” I asked, hot and storming, unsure how to think.
“Oh, because he’s going to watch me fuck you. Watch your body take me… the way your mouth moves, the way you scream… the way I break you down and build you back up again. I want Wolfe to see exactly what I do to you, so that he never forgets his fucking place. Or that you’re mine.”
Wolfe smirked, and the entire cabin caught fire.
twenty-five
Threx: A Memory (The First Time)
A Memory
There are certain ways shadows like to play, and they have always been interested in her. Crawling along her skin in the early light, drinking the dawn from the slope of her neck. The pink of her lips fading into a gloomy violet whenever she shifted just so. It was a strange somnophilia, the way they took her body but never her soul.
Unlike me. All I am is shadow.
It was a slow-burn morning, the kind that whispers when it slips into a room before leaving it deathly cold. She had been sleeping on my arm, the brush of her thigh draped over mine as though my body was hers to take.
And it was.
I didn’t let others touch me this way or feel anything beyond the emotion I was willing to give them. But with Daphne, it was different. She knew me. It was simple. Violent. Perfect. Just like her.
Everything about her made sense, even with a blade at my throat. It hurt me to know that Daphne never knew she wasdancing on the gallows, or that she had fallen in love with a ghost. That if she weren’t here tethering me to this pathetic excuse for a life, I would say, fuck off to the rest of it. Not that I wanted to die, but much like the end ofThe Lord of the Ringswhen Frodo leaves the Shire because his soul was too weary, I craved that longboat into the After. Some weird chance at peace. But as long as Daphne walked among the living, I would be here, too. Maybe that is why the shadows kissed her good morning but never left their mark.
She yawned, her pale lids opening just enough to catch me looking at her.
“Did you know,” she said behind a dreamy smile, “that when men are hanged they get a boner?”
I shook my head, cracking a smile in the dim light. Oh, the things my woman says.
“It’s called angel lust. Apparently, being decapitated or hanged constricts the blood flow and causes a death erection.”
Yes, I did know this.
Intimately.
We hung traitors in the Underworld, over the walls of their clubhouses, in the shower, off a bridge… It did not fucking matter. You break your vow, they break your neck. It was the only actual law that every faction or minor club accepted, because loyalty was the only type of morality that gave you permission. Still, dying with a rager, while your lungs twitch and your body folds in on itself, is the darkest shit of all.
“Watching the History Channel again?” I placed my hand on her stomach, loving the way her body instantly became mine.
“You were late,” she yawned again. “And Nathem was comfy.”
Daphne rolled into me, causing my hand to slide to her hip.
“Can we skip today?” she asked, inhaling my scent. “You’ve been gone a lot.”
She wasn’t wrong.
“Sure,” I lied, watching her eyelids flutter. These were the best moments of the day. The small minutes before time began, and she was all mine.
Daphne went quiet, her body attempting to drag her back into sleep when her leg slid down the line of my cock. I was hard… but we didn’t talk about it. I think she silently took the win while I quietly gave it to her.
I smiled into her hair, thinking about her younger self and the first time she had ever asked to see it.
“It is so soft,” she said, stroking it up and down with those beautiful hands of hers. “But how…” She cocked her head to the side, arching a brow from between my legs.
“What?” I had asked, making it twitch to see her smile.