“Now,” he whispers, his voice thick with a crazed, obsessed hunger. “Now we start.”
He doesn’t stay at the tree. He keeps me wrapped around him, his cock still buried to the hilt, a thick, throbbing anchor that keeps us fused together as he treks deeper into the shadowed throat of the forest. Every step he takes jars him deeper into me, the rhythmic bounce of his gait sending sharp, white-hot stabs of sensation straight to the back of my skull.
He finds a hollow where the pine needles have piled into a thick, springy carpet, sheltered by the low-hanging boughs of an ancient hemlock. He lowers me down, but he doesn’t let go. He follows me to the earth, his massive weight pinning me into the soft, fragrant needles.
The heroin is a cruel mistress; it makes the world feel like it’s made of velvet, but it sharpens the agony of the betrayal.
I am a ghost, I think, my mind drifting like smoke through the trees. I died in the barn. This is just the haunting.
He begins to move, and it’s a revelation of filth. He isn’t slamming into me anymore; he’s grinding, his hips rotating in a slow, agonising circle that makes his girth stretch my walls until I feel them thinning. He’s thick enough to hurt, heavy enough to drown in. Every time he pulls back, the vacuum of his exit makes me whimper, and every time he slides back in, he finds a new, raw spot to claim.
“F-Felix,” I rasp, the silver-blonde waves of his hair blurring as he looms over me. “Please… just… kill me. If you ever loved me… if you ever cared… just kill me now.”
He freezes. His hands, which were pinned beside my head, move to frame my face. He leans down, his lips brushing mine—not a kiss of comfort, but a kiss of absolute possession. He tastes of the champagne he forced down my throat and the cold winter air.
“Kill you?” he whispers against my mouth, his voice a low, vibrating growl. He hitches his hips, driving himself another inch deeper, bottoming out so hard I feel the impact in my lungs. “No, Wendy. I didn’t spend a hundred million dollars to watch you bleed out in the dirt.”
He licks my split lip, his tongue soft and teasing against the wound.
“I bought you to watch you live. I bought you so I could feel this—” he thrusts, a slow, wet slide of friction that makes my toes curl into the pine needles— “every single night for the rest of our miserable lives.”
He begins to pick up the pace, his thrusts becoming more rhythmic, more intentional. I can hear the wet, slapping sound of his skin hitting mine, a primalpercussion in the silence of the woods. My pussy is a riot of nerves, clenching around his thick shaft with a desperate, involuntary hunger that makes my soul sick.
I hate you, I try to think, but the thought is swallowed by a surge of heat that starts at the base of my spine and radiates outward. I am melting. I am a candle being held to a blowtorch.
“You’re so tight for me,” he groans, his eyes blown wide, the electric blue practically glowing in the dark. “Even high out of your mind, you’re begging for more. You’re coming for the man who stole you, aren’t you?”
He reaches down, his fingers finding my clit again, grinding against it as he delivers a sequence of fast, shallow stabs that keep me right on the precipice of a break. I am sobbing now, my head thrashing on the forest floor, the pine needles poking into my bare back.
“Kill me,” I moan, the words dissolving into a high, broken keen as the orgasm begins to fracture my vision. “Please, Felix… don’t make me… don’t make me stay…”
“You aren’t going anywhere,” he snarls, his jaw locking as he prepares for his own release. He seizes my wrists, pinning them above my head with one hand while the other continues to work me into a frenzy. “You’re staying right here in the dark with me. Forever.”
He gives one final, bone-crushing lunge, his entire body shuddering as he pours himself into me, his heat filling my womb and spilling over, a hot, sticky brand that tells the world—and the ghost of Peter—exactly who I belong to now.
Part Five
This isn’t love. It’s obsession. And obsession doesn’t build—it devours. Piece by piece. Breath by breath. Until there’s nothing left of the girl who walked into the booth… except the monster he made her.
Peter
The basement is a tomb, and we’re the ones digging the graves.
The air is thick with the smell of industrial cleaner and the cold, sharp scent of gun oil. My ribs are a map of agony, every breath a reminder of the night Wendy was ripped out of my world. The medic is done, but the sting of the staples is nothing compared to the hollowed-out rot in my chest.
I close my eyes for a second and I see her. Not the woman in the cage, but Wendy in the morning light, her hair a messy halo, smelling like vanilla and safety. Now, she’s out there in the dark, and every second I’m sitting on this crate is a second she’s terrified, wondering why I haven’t saved her yet. My stomach twists into a hard, cold knot. If they’ve touched her—if they’ve dimmed that light—I’ll burn this entire city to the ground just to keep her warm in the ruins.
Across the room, Tahlia is moving like a ghost. She’s got her oversized hoodie pushed up to her elbows, andshe’s methodically checking a tactical vest. She isn’t crying. She isn’t soft. She’s sharp edges and bitter survival. She’s checking the weight of a blade, her blue eyes fixed on nothing, lost in whatever hell she carries around.
I lean toward Hook, my voice a ragged whisper that barely carries over the hum of the fluorescent lights. “Look at her, James.”
Hook pauses, a half-loaded magazine in his hand. We both look. She’s in her element—the cold, the steel, the preparation for a war she didn’t ask for. She looks like a child trying on a soldier’s skin, and it’s the most heartbreaking thing I’ve ever seen.
“She’s going to break,” I mutter.
Hook doesn’t answer. He just sets the magazine down with a heavy clack and starts walking. His boots are slow, deliberate thuds on the concrete. He stops right in front of her, his shadow swallowing her whole.
“What the fuck are you doing, little fairy?”
