Page 23 of Grotesque

A firm knock echoed down the hallway. I glanced up, the sun was just starting to make its way behind the tree line. Muddied colors washed across the clouded sky.

I opened the front door. “I’m surprised you didn’t let yourself in.”

Corban touched his fingers to the throat of his black collared shirt and let out a soft hum. “I wanted to give you the opportunity to invite me in.”

This was all an illusion. I was not really in control as I stepped back, waving my hand to the side to allow him entry.

The flash of darkness in his eyes as he took me in, the slow winding assessment he made of my body, brought heat to my cheeks immediately.

The door shut behind him without so much as a flick of his wrist.

He stepped toward me with a predatory smile, but I held up my hand, catching him in the chest. “Wait! We’re going to talk first.” I looked back at the door, my nerves already shot.

What sort of creature could do that? Move objects without touching them, disappear into thin air?

My terrible fascination with finding out the answer would be the death of me.

Corban’s brows knit together. “Talk? Last night you were begging me to fuck you.”

I swallowed as I tried to ground myself. I could feel my body growing hot with want by the simple touch between us. The thrum of his heart was a welcome melody beneath my palm. I jerked my hand away and took a couple of steps back.

Corban followed. “Don’t you want to play another game?

” He looked absolutely lethal as he prowled after me, matching each step as I backed into the living room.

When he drifted into the shadows he seemed to meld into them, disappearing entirely until he moved again, back into the soft glow of the lamplight.

“Yes. But one of my choosing. Twenty questions,” I said quickly.

Corban’s steps slowed with a cock of his head. He scowled. “Ten.”

I kept walking backward until my feet met the cool hardwood exposed at the edge of the living room rug. “That’s not enough.”

“Twenty is too many. Take it or leave it.”

“Fine. Were you watching me earlier? When Quint was here, was that you?”

Corban’s head tipped to the side. His eyes caught the lamplight with the movement and that hunter’s glow returned, the flash of a cool green reflection. “I’ve watched you from the very first day you set foot on these grounds.”

Fuck, if it was anything like the way he was watching me now, it made it even more concerning. There was something soulless behind the keen, dark hunger staring back at me.

“How do you know who I am? I never met Maxine.”

Corban shrugged. “I know all of her children, and her daughter’s daughter.” He gave me a knowing look. “Maxine spoke of you all, often.”

“I’m sure she was complaining when she did.”

At that the corner of Corban’s mouth tipped up. “It is true she did not speak highly of them. You, though, she only mentioned once, and it was with kindness.”

A thousand questions came to mind when it came to Grandma Macky. As much as I wanted to pick his brain about her, I couldn’t waste all of my questions on her. Not tonight. “I never met her,” I said, more to myself.

A sick feeling overcame me as it dawned on me that she had lived in this house a very long time. Long enough that Corban must have haunted her too. Like he was me, like he had Rosaline.

“Did you ever….” My face heated at the thought. It was clear he’d had relations with Rosaline but I hadn’t considered he’d also been with my grandmother. “Did you do to her what you’re doing to me?”

Corban’s eyes glittered like dark jewels. “Did I ever fuck her?” he clarified.

I nodded.

A flicker of darkness flashed across his features. “On rare occasions. Maxine was not much of a team player.” Poison dripped from his words as if the bitterness was a physical taste in his mouth.

“Did you hurt her?”

Corban took his time answering. Watching him closely, I could tell that whatever was going through his mind still simmered. Macky was clearly a sensitive topic. “No,” he answered thinly.

I crossed my arms, waiting. A low hiss escaped his lips.

“Maxine and I did not get along but I never hurt her.”

“Did you force her? I know you crept into my room the other night while I was sleeping.”

Corban clucked his tongue. “You’re watching me now?

I should be flattered, but I’m offended you would think so lowly of me.

I have never forced anyone to spread beneath me.

And if my memory serves me correctly, you enjoyed yourself the other night while you were sleeping .

” He said the last word as if I had been playing a game with him then too. As if I had been pretending.

“Some would consider that a violation,” I said thinly.

He chuckled. “And yet you invited me in. What does that say about you, Sorcha?”

My hands curled into fists, a movement he tracked with a smile. I hated when he smiled like that, like he was one step ahead of me and already laying the trap I was about to fall into.

“Are you done with your silly questions?”

He wasn’t getting off that easy. “Why are you here? And I don’t mean now but I mean… overall in this house. I know you’ve been here since it was built.”

Red light flickered within the whites of his eyes. “I am part of it,” he said simply. “How do you know how long I’ve been here?”

Well shit. I ignored his question and moved on quickly. I didn’t want to have to explain Rosaline’s diary, not when I wasn’t finished reading it. “What are you?”

Corban ran his thumb over my lip. “Ask another question.”

“Why won’t you tell me?”

“Because it’s so much more fun to keep you guessing.” A soft smile spread his plush lips apart. Pointed fangs flashed.

Absentmindedly I touched the marks on my neck. A flutter of nausea hit me when I realized Quint could have seen them earlier had my hair not been down. There’d be no way I could have explained those away.

“What do you want with me?” I asked.

“Isn’t it obvious?” He chose that moment to stalk even closer.

I evaded him, slinking my way backward into the kitchen.

He was clearly a creature of magic and I didn’t want him casting a spell on me.

Because that was the only explanation as to why I wanted him so badly.

When he touched me, I became a different person.

I didn’t recognize her, and wasn’t in a hurry to meet her again when I barely understood what Corban was.

I stepped around the center island, trying to maintain some distance

“Give me a straight answer,” I said coolly.

Corban spread his hands on the island and leaned forward.

The barrier didn’t provide as much space between us as I’d hoped, as he was so tall.

He was practically leering in my face at this angle.

“I want to give you pleasure, Sorcha. I want nothing more than to fuck every thought you have right out of that pretty little head of yours. I want to consume you.”

It sounded more like a threat than a declaration of love, yet I found myself still rooted to the spot before him, despite my instincts screaming at me to run. Because I knew the pleasure he could give me. Something else told me what he had given me so far was just a taste.

I swallowed. “Are you from this world?”

He slid around the edge of the island, his palm making a shushing sound as it caressed the wood. “I’m afraid you’ve used up all your questions.”

“I’ve let you into my body, the least you can do is let me into your mind.”

Something like surprise crossed his features. Corban tipped his head to the side again, hinting at the starving predator lurking beneath his curiosity. “Two more,” he said, his words clipped.

“Are you from this world?” I repeated.

“No.”

“Why do you only come out at night?” I backed against the counter as he hovered over me. The tall shadow he cast swallowed my entire body, shrouding me in darkness.

He pressed one hand against the cabinet and the other to the neighboring counter.

I was trapped. My heart slammed against my chest despite my body warming to the idea of him putting those large hands on me again.

Fear and anticipation, they were becoming as close as lovers.

Like Corban and I would be if he kept this up.

“Would you like me to haunt you in the sunlight?” My eyes widened as a hand made entirely of shadow stroked down my face, before wrapping a strand of my hair around its finger.I glanced left and right, both of his real hands were still firmly planted on either side of me. How?!

His eyes slid past my face to something behind me, and his body seemed to freeze. He became so still I thought he had turned to stone, his skin greying as a tremor suddenly ran through him.

“You’re a very bad girl, Sorcha.” He plucked one of the stems from the vase that sat on the countertop just past my hip and tossed it to the floor.

“Keeping gifts from another man who does not even know you. Foxglove. Hemlock. Nightshade.” With each name he tossed one of Quint’s stems to the floor and in their stead others grew.

Ones I recognized from the garden. “These suit you much better.”

I could feel the color leech from my face. “Poison. Those are all–”

Corban sneered. “They’re only deadly if they’re misused. Oh, don’t look at me like that. Did you really think the garden was nothing more than pretty ornamentation when a creature such as I haunts your domain? Macky may have planted the Belladonna Garden, but these days it answers only to me.”

For all of the scary stories I had read, I knew nothing about what poisonous plants looked like. Their names rang loud and clear, though and I watched in horror as the sparsely decorated vase bloomed with a deadly bouquet.

Corban’s breath stroked chills down my skin. “How does it feel knowing you’ve invited Death into your bed? That the darkness you seek between pages is blood and flesh before you.”