Page 23

TWENTY-TWO

DRACO

There is a cop out the front asking Kaden questions about last night. If he saw anything when they found the man’s body on the side of the road. I swiped the cameras just in case. We were home and I have my alibi at the carnival at the time it happened. Kaden didn’t know that Athena left so there is that.

I hear the oak door close with a thud followed by Kaden’s footsteps from behind as I sit on one of the stools eating cereal. The Terrifier mocking me with a smile from the box on the granite counter from this morning’s grocery delivery.

“Hey,” he says leaning on the counter facing me. “What time did you get in? That was the cops. They found a man dead on the side of the road. They wouldn’t give me details just if I saw or heard anything.”

“You didn’t.” I dip my spoon in the bowl and bring it to my mouth. The loud crunch as I chew replacing the silence that suddenly blankets the kitchen.

He knows why I’m here and that I don’t give a fuck about the dead guy or the cops. They have nothing on us. Never have. Never will. Years of paying people to cover our tracks has paid off. He’s redirecting the fact that he brought her here without telling me.

For the first time, Kaden is doing things he normally wouldn’t and it’s because of her.

“Uh…where did you sleep last night?”

I quirk a brow. “Worried?”

He shakes his head but he can’t hide that he’s nervous from what I might say. How I’m going to react, but I won’t call him out on his bullshit. If he didn’t defy me, I wouldn’t have had the best sleep or tasted the most delicious pussy last night.

He pushes off the counter and opens the fridge. “Is that all you’re going to eat?”

“I already had my breakfast,” I reply, dipping my spoon in my bowl for another bite.

Small steps echo in the house, the floor-to-ceiling glass adding to the effect. The sun casting a glow through the trees.

Athena finally appears wearing one of my shirts hanging to the middle of her thighs and not much else with a clown face pasted to the front that reads I’M WITH THE CLOWN pointing a finger to the left.

“Good morning,” Athena greets her cheeks going from pink to flushed red.

Kaden closes the fridge. His eyes go wide as he looks between Athena to me and then back. “What the hell happened?” he says stepping close to her, his eyes fixed on her neck.

“Um…,” she trails off her eyes finding mine.

The sound of me chewing filling the silence once again.

Kaden narrows his gaze on me. “What did you do to her?”

I swallow and lick my lips. “Last night or this morning? You’ll have to be a bit more specific.”

“This is not funny,” he says with a glare. “Look at her.”

I run my gaze from the tips to her pretty red-painted toes up her smooth toned legs. The bite marks on her inner thighs like polka dots on her skin. Then continue to her hard nipples and perky breasts also marked underneath the shirt as the rest of her stomach. Her neck to her red swollen lips lightly bruised that also matches per swollen pussy. She looks perfect.

“What about her?” I feign ignorance.

“She looks like she was attacked,” he says staring at the marks on her neck.

Rage about what almost happened when she left last night replaces the need to throw her over my shoulder and take her back up to my room and finally fuck her. I held back last night not wanting to push. I wasn’t sure if she could handle me. She looked so innocent in the shower. Unsure. Alone. The night in the haunted house, I wanted her to tell me she wanted me. I wanted to hear it from her lips because I would never take what wasn’t offered so I held back.

I’m glad I did.

Sometime after the diner, I received a text from Kaden telling me her real name and who she was. I still wanted her but I had to be careful. I didn’t buy it for a second that her stepfather was innocent but I wasn’t sure if she was crazy or not. They don’t send people to the nut house for that long if they weren’t. Not to my knowledge, but so far, she hasn’t shown signs that she is and that is a problem. One that I intend to solve.

“It’s okay, Kaden. I’m fine,” she says.

Concern moves across Kaden’s features. “You don’t look… I mean you look fine but those marks don’t.”

Her hand instinct reaches for her throat. Annoyance has me getting up and tossing the bowl and spoon, making a clank in the sink.

Athena moves to wash it but I block her path. She looks up and my eyes drop to her lips wanting another taste but that would give her ideas. Ideas that last night meant more than it did. Anything else would be too risky.

“You don’t have to clean. I pay people for that.”

“Oh…okay.”

“I have some pants upstairs you can have. I’ll wait for you to get your things so I can take you back.”

Hurt fills her eyes but she masks it by lowering her gaze and I know I’m being an asshole but Athena has seen too much. She knows too much. It’s not that I’m afraid she will go to the cops because for her that is not an option. The motel and her dancing at the Church make sense now. She’s laying low. It’s what anyone would do once they were release after being found guilty. It’s not like she can get a job anywhere with her record and this town is that last place she lived and it’s probably all she knows.

When she goes back up, Kaden whirls around and hisses, “What the fuck, Draco?”

“I told you she can’t stay.”

“So fucking her is okay but giving her a place to stay isn’t?”

I don’t correct him that we technically didn’t fuck. “She isn’t a stray you pick up off the street and keep as a pet Kaden.”

He scoffs. “Yeah, but that didn’t keep you from fucking her and then tossing her in the trash like a used condom.”

Even if I was being a dick to her in the diner and she didn’t deserve for me to treat her like shit. He overstepped. He doesn’t understand what can happen. The risk. Once people get wind that she is out and back in Stockbridge, it will risk everything and that includes all of us. I couldn’t care less about some stupid prophecy or ritual I don’t believe in. Those men are real and they are out sacrificing young girls. The cops are useless and can’t stop it. It’s up to us to do it. It doesn’t matter how much I want her. Sex is sex and my appetite for one woman isn’t worth the lives of innocent girls. She’s a risk. A big one. I don’t care what I’m supposed become. I’m me and nothing has changed that. It doesn’t matter what they wanted me to believe.

I get in his face, our nose almost touching. Rage bubbling up with my words for how careless he is when it comes to her. “Who I fuck is none of your business. I don’t give you shit about who you stick your dick in. She wasn’t complaining and I did allow her to stay. Despite you going behind my back. One night. That’s all she gets. You know how I feel about bringing people to this house. Especially, someone unstable like her. She’s a risk. A…”

“I’m ready.” Her voice has me snapping my mouth shut. My last words echoing in the large space not sure how long she’s been standing at the foot of the staircase.

I close my eyes. Fuck.

Kaden steps aside and I hear him pick up his keys. I refuse to turn around and see the look on her face.

“It’s better this way,” I tell myself.

Let her think I don’t want her. I don’t care if she was in a mental institution. I’m not what you call sane either. I’m fifty shades of fucked up and none of them are gray.

“Hey…um…I’ll take you back.” I hear Kaden tell her.

It’s not until I hear the front door close with a thud that I turn around.

I spot a piece of paper on the counter. I pick it up and notice her handwriting is childlike, or like someone who hasn’t written something in a long time.

It would have been easier to get rid of me, if you had let him take me last night. That way, you wouldn’t feel regret this morning.

Ps. I left your shirt on the bed. I wouldn’t want anyone to think I’m the crazy one for taking it.

Regrettably,

Athena

I crumble the note in my fist. “Fuck,” I mumble and toss it across the room.

I pull the roots of my hair as a sharp pang fills my chest thinking of that asshole with his grimy hands picturing him shoving her in the back of that van imagining all the things he would have done to her.

It’s what had me rushing back only to find her in the shower using my soap. There was no way I couldn’t resist. I had to have a taste. I marked with my teeth, my lips, my breath and finally tasted her sweet cum on my tongue listening to her moans like it was mantra I didn’t want to end.

She was exhausted by the time I dried her in a warm towel and carried her to my bed. Something I never do with anyone.

I’m still trying to wrap my head around what it is about her that has me acting out of character. There was a small moment that lasted a fraction of a second I thought what Kaden and my brother said was real. It was the first connection I felt with someone. I couldn’t enough of her skin. Hunger gripped me the moment I kissed her mouth and I couldn’t get enough.

When we I carried to her the bed, I did something I never did. I waited until she fell asleep and held her in my arms. A woman I just met, knowing nothing about her except that she’s considered crazy, and a killer.

I check my phone to see if Kaden sent me a text but he hasn’t. I know he’s angry with me with the way I treated her this morning but it’s for the best.

There was a truth in what I said. I can’t risk the lives of those young girls. If I could save one, it’s better than none.

Athena Dean is a risk to everything we do and stand for. We are not just freaks, we are justice for the innocent.