Page 28 of Executing Malice (Jefferson Rejects #4)

LEILA

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Brain fog has me struggling to pinpoint my location the next morning. It pangs in protest with my first attempt at prying my eyelids open. Tears blur my vision as my retinas are burned to nothing under the glare of the sunlight.

I groan and shift, trying to adjust the heavy weight of my body away from the punishment only to have every joint and muscle resist. Knots seize along my spine and across my shoulders. My neck twinges. And I cease my attempts. I get the message. I need to simply lie here until I die.

But my resilience refuses to submit and I’m trying again to open my eyes. I’m struggling to push up. Apparently, some part of me really wants to start the day, no matter the agony.

How much had I drunk last night? I remember one glass, but the way my throat is raw and my head is pounding, it must have been an entire case.

Biker douche.

It’s his fault .

I whimper and dig the heel of my hand into the spot between my throbbing eyes and push up on the slab of rock I was sleeping on.

I’m still on the floor, it seems. The TV is dark, possibly having timed out at some point.

All my snacks and the now wasted bottle of wine are still piled next to me untouched.

At a glance, everything seems normal, except for the burning itch in my thigh.

The uncomfortable heat pulses in steady waves.

It’s the equivalent of residual heat after a burn, but it has me reaching under the covers and I freeze.

I’m naked.

Not entirely. I have my top on, but my shorts and panties are missing.

I shove back the blanket and stare down at my bare legs and tender pussy. The latter feels used and wet. The same sensation as the other night after waking up from my nightmare to a dark, greedy shadow lapping at my core.

Only, I have no memory of him touching me, but one solo mission of sending my hand to explore the area confirms his presence. My opening is slick and dripping.

I wait for the spear of outrage. I wait to feel violated and enraged. I wait for literally any feeling that isn’t some weird acceptance that he used me while I was asleep. But that’s all there is .

Acceptance.

That’s it.

Like it’s perfectly normal and acceptable.

But I’m not given time to fully evaluate my full mental thought process when my fingertips brush the smooth tug of adhesive plastered to the high part of my inner thigh. High enough that it practically grazes my lips.

I blink hard, head lurching with the effort. The room tilts in a slow, queasy circle. I’m too aware of the sour taste coating my tongue, dragging down my throat with every inhale.

My stomach knots as I struggle not to throw up.

Still, I hold it in while pulling my knees apart to get a better look at the clear rectangle of tape and the smudge of ink underneath. The single word. A possessive marker branding me forever.

Owned.

Nothing else. No elaboration, not that there needs to be.

A simple and powerful statement of ownership that has my entire being tearing in two.

Two warring halves on opposite sides. One in outrage.

Adamant and appalled by the claim. One oddly pleased.

Even a bit cherished. It’s an odd combination that weighs with indecision on both ends.

He tattooed me in my sleep .

I’ve never had a tattoo. I can’t even begin to assume the feeling, but I know it’s supposed to hurt, especially somewhere so soft. Yet, I slept through the entire ordeal.

Unless...

I glance at the empty glass on the floor next to my makeshift bed. I don’t know what I’m looking for. White residue, maybe. Some telltale sign of tampering. But it’s the only explanation. The only way he could brand me and use me without jostling me awake even once.

At last, my anger makes its appearance. It finally rears its head in indignation, but for all the wrong reasons.

Even I have to admit to myself I’m not taking this the way I should be.

Any other person, any other normal person would be on the phone with the sheriff already.

Not furious because they didn’t get to watch the process.

I’m clearly broken.

There’s obviously something very wrong in my head.

The second I became aware of having a stalker, I should have alerted Reed. I should have filed a complaint. I should have led Reed straight to the biker and had him removed from my life.

Though, I doubt he would have left that easily.

I definitely could have been more forceful telling him to leave me alone. I could have screamed in the middle of town, collecting my fellow towns people to run him off .

Again, doubtful he would have given up.

It’s obvious from his pattern of behavior, he’s determined to stay in my life if for no other reason than to terrorize me with toe curling orgasms. Even after the piercings and now the tattoo, I don’t feel unsafe.

I don’t feel threatened. The feeling curling up inside me like a cat in a fresh strip of sunlight is pleasure.

Giddy delight. His attention isn’t unwanted, even if the logical part of my brain insists it is.

Still, he can’t be allowed to think it’s okay to drug me whenever he feels like it. At least, not without talking to me about it first. Communicating.

That’s the problem, I realize with a new thread of realization. He never communicates. He simply does these things without a shred of explanation and I’m left to decipher them.

That is something we are definitely going to need to talk about. And the helmet. While I love a masked man, at some point, the fantasy needs to end. I need to see his face. While I’m certain I’m not going to be disappointed, I’m not going to play this game forever.

Feeling pretty good about my mental instability, I start to push to my feet only to spot the square of white perched on the edge of the blankets, next to the pillow.

Even at a glance, I recognize the glossy back of a polaroid.

I have to practically stretch my entire body to reach it and flip it over .

It takes only a second to figure out the image.

There’s no mistaking it for anything else.

It’s a slightly grainy snapshot of a beautiful, male torso standing before a familiar mirror.

One hand flat against the glass, fingers extended.

The other holds an old polaroid camera at face level, shielding him where the harsh flare of the flash doesn’t.

The horrific depiction of art painted into his skin is unmistakable, even if I didn’t already know who it was.

But he’s topless. The front of his cargos are pulled apart in a wide V that is concealing nothing as they slip down his lean hips. I’m given a clear view of his cock poking up the front, steel bars glinting.

I stare at it, at him too long. I know I am. I can’t take my eyes off all those muscles and ink. I can’t stop imagining him pushing that thick head inside me, piercings and all.

The area in question pangs with the need to have him again. To get pushed across the bed and wrestled into submission. I want him to force me onto my stomach, hold me down and make me take every inch.

It’s a depraved thought linked to images of him fucking me so hard we wreck the wall. That he breaks my bed. I want him to use me until it hurts to walk.

I fall back against the pillow and hold the photo up. I trace every line and curve of his arms, the chiseled landscape of his chest. I can’t see his hands, but I know how they feel manhandling me, holding me down.

I’m so lost in the sight of him that I don’t notice the scribble of words along the bottom.

“Matching brands.”

I’m about to curse him for yet another cryptic message when I see it. The spot he’d worn the gauze back in the butcher’s basement, right along his lower abdomen is gone.

My name, not written, not inked, but carved crudely into his flesh. Each jagged letter swollen and angry, the skin puckered around the wound.

It’s not a tattoo.

It’s not something easily covered or concealed.

It’s carved into him so there is no mistaking that he belongs to me.

And after the incident with Felicity, I know this is his way of telling me he’s mine. Only mine.

God, I’m fucking insane.

I have to be. Or he is. Maybe both of us, because why does the sight of my ownership on him turn me feral? Why am I so turned on I can barely breathe? It’s a wildfire crashing through my system, a devouring force upending all my common sense.

But the longer I stare, the harder I study the photo, the sicker the scene becomes .

The hand on the mirror is bloodstained. It streaks across the glass in an almost brown tinge resembling shadows at first glance.

The shower curtains behind him, faded and grainy over his shoulder are mine. The sink near his bloody abdomen is mine.

What isn’t mine is the crisp, green candy apple with caramel drizzle sitting just along the edges of the photo.

Or the razorblade resting in a shallow pool of red on the counter, a gleam of silver in all that darkness. He must have dropped it after the last stroke, after the final letter.

Disgusting.

Psychotic, unhinged, deranged behavior.

Everything he’s done so far has been out of pocket and certifiable. He needed his own cell. Padded with bars.

A laugh escapes my lips. A thin, shaky sound that hinges on disbelief and something .

.. visceral and heady. Not disgust. Not even shock.

Because even as my stomach flips, it’s heat that pools low in my belly.

It’s my thighs pressing together with a greedy hunger.

My mind flashes with the image of him doing it while I slept just down the hall.

Being so careful not to wake me as he disfigured himself in the name of reckless obsession.

An obsession with me.

He stood there with the blade in hand and dragged the fine edge into skin. He would have hissed at the initial pull, the sting. He would have braced himself against the pain, teeth bared, eyes wild, thinking only of me.