Page 271 of Blackwood

Once was too many. This? This was unforgivable.

Chapter 73

BELLA

Our Apartment

63 Days Since Daddy’s Death

“Ah! Cade,” I moan, voice breaking as he sucks my clit between his lips, tongue flicking in brutal, punishing circles that make my hips buck against his mouth. His fingers are inside me, curling just right, dragging over that perfect spot again, and again, and again. I’m soaking his hand, writhing, desperate, my thighs trembling as the pressure coils tight.

He groans into me, hungry, feral. “That’s it, sweetheart. Come for us. Let go… for me.”

Lex’s mouth crashes into mine, claiming and wild, like he can taste every bit of what Cade’s doing to me. He pulls back, breathing hard, then dips lower, wraps his lips around my nipple and bites—sharp, possessive, filthy. I cry out, grabbing at Cade’s thick hair while grinding up into his mouth.

Lex growls, dragging his teeth along my skin. “You’re so fucking perfect like this,” he rasps. “Come on, baby. Let us have it. Let us wreck you.”

I nod. My whole body’s trembling now. The pressure between my legs climbs, tightens, coils into a need that steals the air from my lungs.

“Her love was a weapon,

Her heart the disease.”

The voice slices through my mind like a whisper from hell. I blink. They’re gone. Gone. The warmth, the mouths, the hands. I’m alone. In our bed in our apartment.

But the sheets are sticky and dark. I throw the comforter back and stagger out of bed, nearly slipping. My breath catches in my throat.

There’s blood. Everywhere. It’s soaked into the white sheets. Spattered across the walls. Footprints in it. My footprints.

“Now she lies in their blood,

Kneeling low in the flood.”

“No, no, no, no…” I whisper, stumbling barefoot into the living room, clutching the wall for balance. The copper stench hits me like a punch to the face.

Zeke’s body is on the couch. Eyes open. Mouth parted. His chest torn apart. Ribs cracked. One hand still stretched toward me. Daddy’s next to him. Slumped in his recliner. A bullet wound in his left temple. Blood soaking the collar of his Razorback T-shirt.

I choke on a sob and run to the front door, slipping in the wetness. I fumble with the handle, yank it open, and trip.

I land hard. The wind knocks out of me as my spine hits the floor. My palms slap wet tile. I scramble to sit up, breath stuck in my throat.

And then I see them, Cade and Lex, bleeding out in the doorway. Cade’s throat is carved wide open, nearly ear to ear. A gaping smile of death. His body twitches once, just once, as if trying he’s to reach me before everything inside him pours out in thick, pulsing crimson waves. His eyes are already glassy. Gone.

Lex. God, Lex. His face is a horror show. One eye swollen shut. Blood smeared across his jaw where his lip’s been splitopen. His arms are outstretched like he tried to shield Cade. Like he fought as hard as he could and still lost. There’s a knife buried in his stomach.

My knife. Handle up. Twisted in deep.

Blood floods beneath him, seeping between floorboards. It’s not a pool, it’s a lake. One that stretches toward me like it’s coming to claim me now too.

“She killed them with kindness, then painted in red.

Their hearts left to wither, their bodies left dead.

She opened her legs with a whisper, a lure,

And shattered their souls with a touch they thought pure.”

Lex’s head jerks, just slightly. A muscle spasm. Or the last flicker of life.