Page 12 of Executing Malice

And there was nothing we could do about it.

Unlike Father, who loved little girls tucked snug in their beds, Everett liked them for a different reason. The same, but different. Father liked breaking their bodies. Everett fucked with their heads.

Not even our sister was safe from them and their hunger, especially when the social workers would bring boys. Father had no need for boys. Everett ... gender never mattered to him as long as he could make them bleed.

But Leila was different.

The urgency in me to keep her safe extended beyond my own safety. It unspooled into an obsession, a mission carved into my very marrow by God himself. It wasn’t this. This thing I feel for her today. It wasn’t mindless madness, silk-wrapped in love and desire. It was innocent. My love for her was protective and gentle. A tenderness I hadn’t felt even towards my own siblings. A friendship and connection unlike anything before it.

She was my person.

The light that chased away the demons in my head.

Her every breath was my religion.

I would sleep with my head on her chest just to hear the Morse code of her heartbeat just for me.

She broke my walls and climbed into the darkness with me when I had no one else and took my hand. All that time, I thought I was protecting her when in reality, she saved me.

She gave me hope. The possibility of a future.

Then she fucking left.

She vanished into the void like some ghost. She slipped free of me so effortlessly, I half believed I made her up. That she’d been a figment of my exhausted, malnourished imagination. An illusion derived of my fears and loneliness.

But then I’d touch the woven plait held together around my dominant hand and I knew I wasn’t crazy. She had been my world for five years. She had promised me a forever place in her life once we both turned eighteen. I didn’t falter from the plan. I stayed in that hell with her, waiting for her to join me over the invisible line of adulthood. We only had a few more months to wait. Then we’d leave, get our own place. Live together. Get married. Have babies.

That was the plan!

I tug sharper on the braid, desperately trying to anchor myself to stop the haunting urge to kick open the trap door and stalk downstairs. To march into her room and demand answers.

I focus back on the screen once more, on the figure shoving back the throw off her legs and pushing to her feet off the sofa. Her book is marked with a thin piece of receipt paper and set on the end table. I don’t need to look to know it’s ten; that’s her usual quit time.

“That’s it. Bedtime,” I murmur as I watch her fold up the loosely knitted blanket and drape it over the back of the sofa.

She shuts off the lamp, makes no effort to check the locks or set an alarm as she wanders lazily into the bedroom.

I hit record on my main monitor and sit back to enjoy the show.

I may have thousands of hours of footage, but I will never not watch as Leila prepares for bed. As she swipes off her loose trousers and T-shirt. I watch as she stands before the mirror in the corner and studies the hills and valleys of her body.

She’s perfect.

Every curve soft, sweet satin I could spend hours tracing with my tongue. Skin the delicate blush of a pink rose. Full hips perfect for a man’s greedy hands.

My hands.

My fingers digging and marking as I guide her back over me again and again.

Every inch of her is a poem, a prose I want carved into my flesh. Into my soul. I want hours ... days to explore every hidden freckle, every mark. I want to worship at her feet and erase every insecurity she might possibly have.

And I know she has them. I see them in the pursed state of her pouty mouth as she scowls at her reflection. The displeasure on her face as she takes in her midsection has my head rocking side to side.

Leila clicks her tongue and pokes at her stomach like it’s something disgustingly unworthy of physical contact. I try to see what she’s seeing, but I can’t. I don’t get it.

“How can you not see how perfect you are?” I mutter to myself and exhale loudly. “I guess I’ll just have to make you see it.”

She unsnaps the hooks on her bra and the full, generous globes spill free. Delicious hills that make my mouth water and my cock hard. My body instinctively tightens as if I can nuzzle them. Palm their spongy mounds and tease the tight little points until she’s writhing and whimpering.