For the first time, I took in my new room. There was nothing special about it. It was just a bland, white-walled room with a queen-sized bed, white bed coverings and a desk and dresser in the corner. When my dad died, we’d lost our sole source of income. My mom wasn’t interested in joining the “rat race,” as she’d called it. There was my dad’s life insurance money, but she used that for her new shopping addiction. So I went to work to pay our bills. The jobs an eighteen-year-old qualified for didn’t exactly buy a life of luxury. So to me, the room was fine.
Except for the absence of bookshelves.
Heaving a sigh, I walked over to the window by my bed and peered outside. I was met with the view of Bishop’s main street. It was weird how Ezra Leeds was supposed to be a pastor, yet there didn’t seem to be a church in town. There were houses, Titus’s garage across the street, a tiny grocery store, town hall and that was it.
The only thing in town that seemed to be noteworthy was a gigantic statue that loomed in front of the town hall. It was some kind of creature made of pine branches, a horse's skull and antlers.
Freaky.
I turned around and quickly bustled out of the room. Anoomphflew from my lips when I crashed into a very firm, muscular body. The box Titus had been carrying spilled onto the floor, and to my horror, everything in it.
The spiciest books in my collection scattered around his feet. We’re talking monster romance books, the kind with the not-so-discreet covers. That wouldn’t have been so bad…if it wasn’t for the fact that I’d made the decision to pack my collection of fantasy vibrators into the same box.
Titus’s gaze slowly tipped downward at the same speed my blush swept down my front in a full-body flush. He stooped down, his muscles flexing through his flannel shirt, and—Christ—picked up the baby-blue toy that was shaped like a long, slender tongue.
He slowly stretched back to his full height, standing in the doorway and blocking my escape. He stared me down, holding the toy up while a sly smirk pulled at the corner of his mouth.
He raised his free hand, fingers curving around my neck. His hand was so huge that his thumb rested in the hollow of my throat and the tip of his pinky rested over the top of my spine.
My heart beat so fast I could feel it pounding in my mouth.
“I was right about you,” he said after an intense beat of silence.
“About what?” I balked, voice barely above a whisper.
“That you’re not as innocent as you look. You’re so small and fragile. If you spread those pretty little thighs for an actual monster, it would snap you like a fucking twig.”
“A real monster. R-right.” I couldn’t believe I was talking about my monster kink with my new stepbrother. What was even more unbelievable was that he seemed pissed off by the notion that I was into monster porn, especially with the way his hard-on was so prominent that it was almost jabbing into my leg.
“What?” my stepbrother challenged. “So you love touching yourself to monsters, but you don’t think they’re real?”
I forced out a humorless laugh, then raised a shaking hand to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear. I was careful not to move away from where he caressed my throat—his cool fingertips felt too good against my fever-hot skin. “Why would I? It’s just a fantasy.”
He smiled at me, and it sliced straight through my chest, piercing my heart. “More like a nightmare, little sis. And here in Bishop, nightmares are real.Veryreal.”
With a silk-soft chuckle, his tongue slipped from his lips. My lungs knocked together, and I wheezed my next breath when he raised the vibrator to his mouth. A long tongue curled around the vibrator’s shaft, wrapping around ittwice. The appendage was so long and thin it couldn’t be anything close to human. The barbell piercing running through its tip was the only normal thing about his freakishly monstrous tongue.
I gasped and tripped backward, falling onto my bed. When he felt me falling, he released my throat. He crawled on top of my bed, looming over me, and pushed me down into my mattress with his weighted gaze. His one white eye was so bright it almost glowed white hot like a brand.
“Scared of me now, little sister?”
Chapter Five
Titus
I’dbeenlayingwideawake in bed for a couple of hours now, and I could still taste the lingering flavor off the sex toy. It was faint and almost overpowered by the flavor of silicone, but fuck me, I could taste it—tasteher.
It was next to impossible to peel myself away from her after that. Especially with how she looked up at me, so surprised when I’d shown her my devil’s tongue.
Delirious intrigue had sparked behind her eyes. Her little heart had pattered hard in her chest, and my hard-as-rock dick had twitched as my thumb stroked the silken skin stretching over the slender column of her throat, feeling her pulse point.
If I were a lesser devil, I might have torn out her delicate little throat right then and there with my bare teeth, and watched her bleed out over her new bedspread.
A violent shiver raked down my spine like nails across my back as I shoved the monster within me down. I had turned abruptly, leaving her gasping for air as I stormed away.
What was wrong with that girl?
She’d seen my tongue, and she wasn’t scared. She was turned on.
