Chapter One
Lore
Mymother’scriesechoeddown the hall, muffled by the duct tape covering her mouth. The terror in them was still unmistakable though.
I couldn’t blame her. She’d just witnessed her new husband get stabbed to death no less than seventeen times.
As I’d stood there and watched Titus Leeds thrust the knife into his father’s chest cavity, I’d counted.
If I were any other girl, I would have run as far away from Titus Leeds, this twisted town and the Pine Barrens as I could get. The backwoods community of Bishop was the place where outsiders came to die.
My mother had married their leader. It had all been a trap, to feed her soul to the Jersey Devil.
And mine too.
But my new stepbrother was only a half-devil. His cruelty had just been his way of trying to get me to run. That hadn’t worked.
So then he’d shifted and shown me his horns. His fangs. His claws. His monstrous tongue.
If anything, those things were just incentives for a monster-smut aficionado like me to stay.
Hearing him tell our parents he planned to consume my soul before the cult could get their hands on it should have been the final straw. That was the part where horror, fear or sheer human survival instincts should have been pushing me to put as much distance between me and my brutal stepbrother as possible.
Arousal was the last thing that should’ve been sweeping through my core and turning my insides molten.
What in the actual fuck was wrong with me? The list was long.
I was falling in love with Titus, a man I’d known for barely two whole days.
The fact that he was half devil just sweetened the deal, because I was what the internet coined a “monster fucker.”
I’d watched a man die. There had been so much blood…
My mother, tied to the bed beside him, had reacted like any human should. And I had felt… empty. Not a trace of pity. Nothing. Nada. Zip.
I’d have felt sorry for her if it hadn’t been for the fact that she’d offered me up to Titus in exchange for her freedom.
I was well aware of the fact that Gloria Brooks was a selfish person. But going as far as to sacrifice her daughter for her own survival? Would she have said that if she’d known it was me standing beside Titus? He’d made me wear his cult mask because he hadn’t wanted me to be the last thing his father saw when he died.
Now, it provided me insight into the true depths of my mother’s selfishness.
Slowly, a new emotion started to seep its way into my heart like poison.
“You’re angry,” my stepbrother murmured as we stepped into the hall, the door to our parents’ room clicking shut behind him.
I turned, leaning my back against the wall as the strength in my legs seemed to vanish. “Can you always do that? Read me like a book?”
Titus was tall, and his lithe body was packed with muscle. His dark hair spilled over his eyes, but I could still make out the hot slivers of his mismatched gaze slicing through me.
Bitter tears blurred my vision until all I saw was the glowing white eye drawing closer as he approached.
His heat licked over my flesh as he pressed in, pushing me against the wall.
“Yes,” he rasped as he tore his mask off my face to expose my teary eyes. “I’m more in tune with you than I ever wanted to be, Lorelei. I’m aware of every single beat of your heart. Every twitch of your pussy as you set your pretty eyes on me. Every sweet breath you breathe. Every tear…”
He arched down, then dragged his hot tongue over my tear-swollen cheeks. Tasting them. “They all belong to me now. So don’t let all this human shit bother you. It’s not your concern anymore. It’s mine. They are my burden now.”
I sighed against him, enjoying the shocking heat of his tongue against my skin paired with the smooth steel of his barbell piercing. “You don’t own me, Titus. Not until you claim my soul. I’m waiting.”
