Total pages in book: 60
Estimated words: 58987 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 295(@200wpm)___ 236(@250wpm)___ 197(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 58987 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 295(@200wpm)___ 236(@250wpm)___ 197(@300wpm)
I eat her like I'm starving. Like she's the only thing that's ever mattered. My tongue works her clit while my fingers push back inside, two and then three, stretching her open. She's grinding against my face now, fucking my mouth, and I can feel her thighs trembling against my cheeks.
"Caleb—Caleb, I'm going to—"
I pull back.
She whimpers, desperate and broken, and I stand up and take her by the hair. I pull her head back so she's looking up at me, and then I guide her down. She goes willingly, sinking to her knees on the blood-spattered concrete, and when I press my cock against her lips she opens her mouth without being told.
I push inside.
Her mouth is hot, and wet, and perfect. I slide deeper, feeling her throat flutter around me, and she gags but doesn't pull away. I hold her there, my cock buried in her throat, and I look down at the blood smeared across her forehead, her cheeks, her chin.
She's the spitting image of the tattoo on my sternum. The one crafted by Posie Little herself. The girl who just got justice.
"Take my cock," I tell Scarletta. "Take all of it."
She does.
I fuck her mouth with slow, deliberate strokes, watching her eyes water, watching drool and blood mix on her chin. She's making desperate little sounds around my cock, and her hand has slipped between her own thighs, fingers working her clit while I use her throat.
I pull out before I come. I'm not finished with her yet.
I haul her up by her hair and spin her around, bending her over a hay bale. Her ass is perfect—round and pale, presented for me. I kick her legs apart and line myself up with her entrance.
I slam inside.
She screams. Not in pain—in relief. In finally getting what she needs. I fuck her hard and deep, my hips slapping against her ass, one hand fisted in her hair and the other wrapped around her throat. She's so wet I can hear it, can feel her pussy gripping me like she never wants to let go.
"You killed him," I growl in her ear. "You pulled the trigger and his blood is all over you and your pussy is soaking my cock."
"Yes," she gasps. "Yes, yes, yes—"
I reach around and find her clit. She's so swollen, so sensitive, and when I circle it with two fingers she shatters. Her pussy clamps down on me, milking my cock, and I follow her over the edge with a groan that tears out of my chest.
I come inside her.
I fill her with it, pulse after pulse, and she takes every drop while Ryan's blood dries on both of us.
When it's over, I stay buried inside her, my forehead pressed against her shoulder, both of us breathing hard.
The barn smells like sex, and death, and blood.
And for the first time in my life, I don't feel alone.
For the first time in my life, I feel… balanced.
Chapter 17
Scarletta
EPILOGUE
Sometimes it's really not about the journey.
Sometimes… it really is the arrival.
That's how I felt that day I killed Ryan.
Like I arrived somewhere after all that struggle.
All those grinding years of depression that felt like drowning in slow motion.
All the Lucky Charms eaten straight from the box at three in the morning.
All the blanket forts constructed out of fear of being seen.
All the stories with weird monster sex, and submission sex, and every other permutation of darkness I could dream up.
Prophetic and fantasy all wrapped into one sick existence.
My life before killing Ryan was the maze.
Something to be survived.
Life after was… my Helix.
My Caleb.
The monster I could live with.
Who will protect me from the literal darkness I swim in.
Sometimes I catch myself waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Old habit. Hard to kill.
I'll be standing in some gilded ballroom in Monaco, or Singapore, or wherever Caleb's latest charity gala happens to be, wearing a dress that blows my mind when I walk by a mirror, and my brain will whisper: You don't belong here. They're going to figure it out. Someone's going to tap you on the shoulder and tell you there's been a mistake.
But nobody ever does.
Caleb watches me across the room during these events. I always know exactly where he is. Some primal GPS in my nervous system that never stops tracking him. He'll be talking to a hedge fund manager, or a tech billionaire, or whoever needs schmoozing, but his eyes find mine every few minutes.
Checking.
Claiming.
Mine.
I used to think that kind of possessiveness would feel suffocating.
Turns out it feels like oxygen.
My laptop comes everywhere now.
Caleb bought me a custom case—hand-stitched Italian leather with my initials embossed in gold. Ridiculous. Obscene. I love it.
I wrote three chapters of my new novel on a private jet somewhere over the Atlantic. Another two in a hotel suite overlooking the Eiffel Tower while Caleb was in meetings. Half a scene in the back of a limousine in Dubai because inspiration struck and I've learned to stop fighting it.