After years of heartache, years of wanting, years of scraping by one cent at a time, I’m finally taking what’s mine.
The camera slips from my hand, the strap dragging against my neck. When I tear my mask off, it’s not because it’s suffocating me or because I’m out of breath.
I just don’t need it anymore.
This beautiful, terrible girl in my home won’t wake up for hours.
Meaning, I have time to do this, to strip the clothes from her body, one item at a time.
While I do, my traitorous heart rebels. It starts pounding harder, urging me to stop. Not to go there. Not to hurt her like this.
I silence my conscience by refusing to see Elowyn as a person anymore, but as my newest commission with a twist.
Unlike the work I’m trained to do, there’s no way to save her, me, or us.
Cracking her soul so I can insert my filthy self into it is destruction.
The thought makes my heart pound even louder. My stomach joins, churning, warning me how this is a bad fucking idea.
It was easier to plan all of this when she wasn’t here, so close.
Fuck that. I’m stronger than this.
I’m cold, calculating, and precise as I set her clothes aside.
While staring down at her naked body, I tell myself I don’t feel sorry for her.
That I don’t see how her legs and arms are lean from hours of hard labor.
My chest definitely doesn’t sting at the pale bleach smudges on her fingertips.
The dark circles under her eyes?
“I don’t care. I don’t. Fucking. Care.”
I’m convinced. Of course I am. But I repeat it a couple more times just in case. It can’t hurt.
When doubts and guilt refuse to leave altogether, I scoff and just get to it. The task at hand.
Those pink nipples need hardening for the pictures I’m about to take.
Again, I have to remind myself that this is business. Blowing on her nipples, licking and biting them, is part of my revenge.
My dick strains in my slacks and precum dampens my boxers when I spread her legs, but that’s to be expected. I’m only human.
The ache in my soul, my ribs, my lungs? That’s a ghost from my past. Nothing more. Nothing less.
A sharp pain slices through my head, calling me a liar, before a worse headache follows.
A familiar pounding, the kind that comes before a flashback to a time when my feelings for Elowyn were pure, right, and incredibly naïve, forces its way into my consciousness.
One I’m helpless to stop.
I stood outside Elowyn’s room, my stomach all tied up in knots.
She’d just turned sixteen weeks ago, a few months before my parents were murdered. Before grief and anger shaped who I was.
That was when my eyes opened. When she stopped being just Barclay’s little sister.
