Page 3 of Broken Highway (Cult Boys #1)

Following his lead, I sit up on the bed and reach for the hem of my shirt. I make sure I have his full attention as I pull it over my head and dispose of it on the bed behind me. I reach for his hand and pull him to sit beside me.

He traces his finger along my cheek. “You’re so fucking hot.”

“Yeah?” I swing one leg over his waist to straddle him. From above, I peer down at him and revel in the power I have over this perfect stranger. I shove him onto his back and massage my hands through the hair on his chest. “What do you like about me?”

The answer is obvious enough.

“Remind me of my son’s friend…” He whispers, his hands finding my hips.

And maybe the answer wasn’t quite that obvious.

“I promise I’m not weird,” he continues. “He’s twenty. How old are you?”

“Twenty.” I lie through my teeth, but in this world, everyone’s lying about something.

Magnus always said lies were the food of the weak and that hunger for the truth was what separated the sinners from the cleansed.

I buck my ass over his crotch. Even through two layers of denim—his and mine—I can feel his cock is enormous and thick.

“I miss being twenty.” He traces a hand through the contour of my abs, his fingers dipping between grooves of muscle. “Wasted all my younger years chasing pussy when all I really wanted...” He finds his way to my throat and cups me gently. “Was someone like you. Someone innocent.”

“I’m not innocent.” I break away from his grasp.

He doesn’t need to know I’m into the rough shit, just not with men like Ray.

Not with men I don’t trust. And especially not in my ass.

That’s a no-fly zone. I drop down and begin mouthing my way down his chest, over his stomach, and then pull his unbuckled belt through the loops of his jeans. It lands with a clank on the floor.

“You look it. Pure. Soft skin and eyes.” He grabs my cock through my jeans and squeezes. “Hard in all the right places.”

I grind my ass over his hardness, applying just enough pressure to drive him wild.

His fingers dig into my skin, dragging with just enough force to leave bruises.

He juts upward, pushing me off of him and onto my back.

He rises to his feet and shoves his jeans and tighty-whities down to his knees in one fell swoop.

His massive cock flings forward, too long and impossibly thick.

My jaw clenches, but I’m ready for the challenge.

He strokes himself as he approaches. “I want to see that ass.”

I know better. I really do. I’m apprehensive, even as I obey, playing the role of the good boy who does as he’s told.

I roll onto my hands and knees, pull my jeans and underwear down enough to expose my ass.

My bare skin is clipped by a whiff of cold air.

It is then replaced with the warmth of a foreign object as it nears.

Ptuh.

I look over my shoulder to see him slicking his cock in his own spit. I force a smile, praying that a playful tone will get me out of this situation without needing to resort to violence. “Sorry, but my ass is a no-no square.”

He drops a hand to massage the curve of my ass, but quickly moves inwards, pulling open my crack to expose my hole. He chokes on something—excitement, arousal, maybe something more sinister.

Guess I’m going to have to be more forceful.

I reach for my jeans to pull them back up, but I’m stopped.

He grabs me by the wrist and twists my arm sideways.

Shoves me forward so that I collapse onto my stomach.

The mattress stamps down as he climbs on top of me, his monstrous cock sliding between my bare ass.

He grabs me by the hips as he begins to gyrate above me, mimicking forceful thrusts as a preview for what’s to come.

He lowers his head to whisper in my ear, “If you scream, it’ll be the last scream you ever scream. ”

This sorry sonofabitch has no fucking clue.

I’m not the innocent boy he thinks I am.

I throw my head back, landing with a crack against his face. Swear there’s a crunch , his nose breaking in half. I jump to my feet as he recoils backward, cupping a hand over his face. I whip a handgun from an ankle holster strapped underneath my jeans and aim it squarely at him.

“Sorry, I’m saving myself for marriage,” I say with a smirk, knowing I’m in control.

He stumbles backward, slowly lifting his hands in the air. Surrendering. Fucking pussy. The center of his face is bludgeoned, painted in dark blood that pools outwards.

My finger dances on the trigger. I think about pulling it because once you take a life, the next one doesn’t seem so hard to take.

Days would go by before someone found him here.

Found him like this. Found him in a blood-soaked pool of his own perversions, but he’d be the victim to the world.

Not the asshole who died trying to take what wasn’t his.

“Please…” he begs, playing the part of an innocent and scared man. “I have a family.”

The trigger’s slicked now, in sweat. It’d be so easy to accidentally pull it.

He’s lucky that I can’t afford a run-in with the police.

A gunshot would no doubt have this rest stop swarmed with patrolmen.

There wouldn’t be enough time to slip away, and the risk is too high that someone would spot me.

“Turn the fuck around.”

He does as told, stumbling over his jeans pooled at his ankles as he turns in a slow circle. His ass is a saggy mess, as dark as forest brush and wrinkled. I swipe my shirt off the ground and toss it over one shoulder.

“Now, you’re going to stay right fucking here for sixty seconds. If you so much as move a muscle, I’ll pull this fucking trigger and paint your brains all over this place. Do you understand me?”

“Y… Yes.”

“Good boy,” I say as I back up slowly, disappearing behind the black curtains. On my way out of the truck cab, I grab his wallet.

After pocketing all his cash, which wasn’t much, I tossed the wallet out the window of my speeding car. Could have landed on the road or the wind could have carried it into the forest. Either way, it’s a decision I now regret.

All that cocksucking—and one attempted assault—for gas money and this piece of shit decides to give out on me.

Karma can’t be a real force, because if it were, I know about a hundred people back home that would have been swallowed whole by it by now.

Yet, here I am, facing the wrath of karma for the things I’ve done.

When bad people do bad things to others, the consequences of those bad things are burdened by the people they are done to.

Apparently, when not-so-bad people do bad things to bad people, the full blunt of karma returns in kind.

I manage to park the car just off the side of the shoulder before it dies with a clunk.

It’s a fool’s errand, but I attempt to turn the ignition anyway.

It just sputters. Smoke rises from the hood, sizzling into the lonesome night sky.

I grip both hands on the steering wheel and shake it violently, screaming quietly through clenched teeth.

It’s not lost on me that I should have just let Ray the trucker breed my ass.

Should have let him do whatever he wanted to do to me.

Should have let him fall in love with me, own me, and take me home to start a new life together.

Sure, it would have been absolute hell, but at least I’d have somewhere to lie my head.

Somewhere to sleep. Somewhere to be safe.

Somewhere far away from here and the people that can’t be far behind me.

I grab my backpack from the passenger seat before exiting the car. While I could sleep in the car for the night and figure out a new plan in the morning, I know it’s not the smartest decision to stick around the scene of a crime.

A chorus of crickets echoes through the forest on both sides of the road, singing a song too foreign for me to understand. The melody of melancholy is unmistakable, though—a collective yearning for a life better than this.

I circle around to the trunk of the car and insert the key into the lock.

Yeah, this fucking car is older than me.

When I pry the trunk door open, a stench fills the night air like damp meat that’s baked in the sun for far too long.

I cock my head, chest heaving, and force away the urge to vomit.

Without looking, I grab the half-filled red gas can from the side of the trunk.

I make quick work dousing the body in gasoline, soak the upholstery, and finally the exterior with what’s left. I stand off the side of the shoulder as I strike the match that irrevocably burns my life to the ground.

My mother always said I was a star, born to combust. Little did she know it’d be like this.

Standing beside a burning fire on the side of the highway.

A fire I lit myself. Others would say the point of no return was pulling the trigger on Magnus’ sorry ass.

I’d say this is the point of no return. Can never go back.

Not now. The act of burning, of incineration, is the ultimate act of destruction.

The one thing a soul can’t survive. The only roadblock to one’s faithful soul finding its way to God.

As I disappear into the night, I faintly hear the echoes of Magnus’ screams as his soul is torched by the flames of my betrayal.

And as I leave the scene of the crime, all I can think is that I wasted a bullet when I shot him in the head.

Should have doused him like I doused the car.

Should have struck the match against the side of the box as he watched helplessly, all the while knowing he’d end up lost somewhere between this life and what comes after.