Page 23 of Hollow House

The Wraith kissed me hard. At some point, he’d ordered everyone out of the room, but I was too numb to notice. My entire body felt like pins and needles were jabbing into me. Thoughts raced through my mind, but none were coherent.

At some point, my knees buckled and the only thing holding me up was him. He lowered me safely to the floor, pulling back from the kiss.

My eyes stung with tears, and I could barely see him. Blood stained the ground beneath me, and I tried not to let my gaze drop, but I failed.

“Love,” the Wraith said.His voice pulled my stare up, like a siren beckoning me into his grasp. I was helpless against his pull. “Don’t cry for him,” he said. “He was a predator.”

“I know,” I managed to choke out.

“Let me help you forget,” he said. “Let me distract you until the pain and memory fades away.”

I didn’t know what to do or say. No one forced that knife into my hands. Not a single person in the room made me stab him.

I’d done that all on my own.

Maybe I was as terrible as the rest of them.

“We should call for help, save him,” I said, a spark of reason snapping me out of my state.

“He’s gone now,” the Wraith said.He reached out, pulling me into his lap, and I curled into his body.

Our lips collided again in a mess of kisses. Tears still fell down my face, and I knew they streaked his face from proximity. I tried not to think about it, not to feel, but I failed miserably. I felt everything.

He lowered me down and pulled back to watch my face for approval. I knew I shouldn’t; this entire night was fucked, but what was one more thing when my morality was completely gone? I nodded, needing something more.

My back pressed into something wet, but all I could focus on was the man above me.

He unzipped his pants and pulled out his cock. I tensed, already anticipating its entrance. At first, he was slow, almost hesitant. His eyes watched me for any sense of regret, waiting for me to pull away.

Would he kill me too if I did?

My mind raced back to the rooftop, to what he said. Those who stayed with him found their success, their deepest desires.

That was everything I searched for, everything I had been working toward, the dream I continually grasped for and never seemed to reach, that Darren kept me from. This was it.

All I had to do was accept what he was offering.

A spot with him…with the rest of the Hollow Society. Those who had everything ripped from them by the world. Those who had become hollow inside, desperate enough to do anything to escape the pit they were slipping into.

I felt that darkness pulling me down.

He devoured me in a single thrust, his cock pushing inside me until I felt myself arching into him. My head tipped back against the hard floor. This wasn’t the same lust-filled sex as before. It wasn’t gentle or caring. It was completely primal.

My hands reached for him, landing on his hardened abdominal muscles. I let them wander along them, tracing his tattoos. A skull sat in the center of them all, staring back at me. I was damned.

Pain rushed through me as I felt him stretch my pussy, my wetness doing little to help how large his dick was. With everything that happened, there wasn’t enough foreplay to even be considerably wet.

Still, I felt myself unraveling beneath him.

With each thrust, I lost a bit more of myself, the person I was no longer an option. I forged a new path for myself, one where I was selfish and chose myself over everything.

He slipped off and moved to lie beside me.

His strong arms moved me to sit on top of him. I positioned his cock at my entrance as I had before and let myself slip down onto it. The pain of the hard floor against my knees was welcomed.

My mind wandered, thinking back to everything the night was.

Every little brush and touch of skin, every kiss, every moment like this.

Each was met with something unexplainable.

Maybe this place was haunted, the stories kids told to explain the house on the hill all true.

The people I had seen, presences felt—how else could I explain that? How many lives had been taken here?

Damon walked me into a room a few away from the room we’d been in. I watched people rush by us dressed in hazmat suits to clean up the mess I made, the one I couldn’t walk away from now.

“Stop thinking about them,” he demanded, grabbing my hand and squeezing. “You have nothing to regret here. You did what was right.”

What was right…

Right for who? Myself? I still tried to grapple with it all.

In the new room, the same people crowded around from before, but this time, something was different. They no longer wore their masks. They watched us enter, all smiling and giving nods of approval. Before, they barely even flashed a smile at me.

I spotted Felix and Jeremy in the corner, whispering to each other and holding similar chalices to what had been served all night.

The couple up on the balcony before, now I knew why they felt so familiar.

I did know them. My best friend and his partner, dressed in clothing fancier than anything I ever seen them in, mingling with a secret society.

A secret society I was now a part of. I damned myself to this; I needed to learn to accept it. If I wanted to move on and make something of myself, I couldn’t let fear and regret hold me back, not when I knew there was more for me beyond where I’d become stuck.

I just couldn’t shake the terrible sinking feeling in my gut that followed stabbing Darren. He was a horrible person. I heard some of the accusations against him at work that HR did nothing about. He deserved the karma that found him.

But still, I had to live with what I did.

I decided what his punishment should be. I let the society sink their claws in and push me toward this. There was no backing out now.

I stopped following Damon’s lead.He stopped and looked back, tilting his head out of concern. His strong grip tightened, and the squeeze was enough to pull me out of the spiral I was aiming for.

People started to approach and congratulate me. Their words barely registered. Instead, my focus was stuck on my friend who had not come over yet. He was avoiding me, and I wanted to know why.

After a few more introductions and pleasantries, I turned to Damon, leaning in so no one else could overhear me.

“Will you excuse me for a second?” I whispered to him.

“Of course,” he said, his tone dark.

I walked over to Felix, my friend’s partner leaving his side to let the two of us talk.

“He’s taken a special interest in you. He never does that,” Felix said before I could even speak..

“What do you mean?”

“He doesn’t let people as close to him as he has you.”

“It’s been one night, Felix. It was a single night of hook ups. I’m sure he’s had others,” I said.

“Sloane, it’s been almost a month.”

My entire world crashed around me. Reality bent, and I felt sick. My hands grabbed my stomach and mouth while I tried to hold back the bile rising in my throat. I dry heaved, and Felix tried to put a hand on my back, which I quickly swatted away.

“You left me here that long? How is that even possible? It’s only been a night,” I said, scrambling for an explanation.

“You saw me here, Sloane. We talked,” he said, his eyes searching mine.

“What?” I asked, but as he said it, I remembered. The dream. I thought it was all a fantasy, that Felix couldn’t really be there…

But it wasn’t. It wasn’t just a trick of my mind or too much wine. I was truly losing touch with reality.

“Are you okay?” he asked, watching me spiral.

“No, I’m not okay,” I yelled. “My best friend, who I thought I could trust, was a part of this all along.”

“I never wanted to lie to you,” he said.

“Did you kill someone?”

He dropped his head, refusing to meet my gaze. “Yes.”

My mouth fell open. The man I’d known since kindergarten, who wrote books about fairies and true love, was now a killer—and I was too.

I looked at my bloodstained hands. Why didn’t the sight repulse me? Why no matter how hard I tried, did I not instantly regret it? Why did I still want him?

“Was any of it real?” I asked.

I wasn’t sure if I meant our friendship or Hollow House or my whole damn reality.

“Of course,” he said, rushing forward and pulling me into hug. “I’m still your best friend. I’m sorry I kept this from you. It was for your own good. If I told you anything, you wouldn’t be allowed to join. You had to decide on your own.”

Decide.

That was what I had done. I’d made a choice, one that could have monumentally fucked me over.

My body was numb, the will to push Felix away gone. It barely registered as he continued, rambling about the Hollow Society and his place in it. My mind and gaze were only focused on one thing across the room.

Him .

Was it all a dream, was I dead, or did I just damn myself for eternity?