Page 18 of Ly to Me (Devils of Alliston Springs #1)

Lyra

The Inferno

N ight came quicker than I’d expected. Carver left after he made a comment that I’d been the one in the wrong for how our past panned out—that it had been me and not him who fractured what we were and caused me to become the person my mama raised me to be.

After seeing him place his high-stakes bet to win the facility, I doubted he changed at all.

Well, that, and the fact that he kept trying to remind me how his fingers and tongue felt on my skin.

As if I’d needed more reminders of him.

Instead of focusing on my hatred, I tried to focus on the positive aspects—in thirty days, I’d get twenty-thousand dollars, and use that to get the life I’d been trying to have ever since I’d left this town.

In the meantime, I’d have to keep avoiding Carver and his mood swings.

It was almost like sometimes he was the same boy I knew all those years ago, and then a fire would burn in those pretty blue eyes and take that boy down with them, igniting a man I’d only seen occasionally when we were young and stupidly in love.

Or more like stupid.

A long sigh escaped me in the shower—the second I'd taken since my hair had been dyed. The glass filled with steam as I caught the reflection of my brown hair and brown eyes. My mama had been beautiful—all blue eyes and blonde hair and high cheekbones with the most subtle hints of blush permanently fixed on her skin. Men, like whoever my father was, loved her. She’d told me so.

Then she’d look at me and see this and just sigh.

So, I sighed again, just for her. Then I immediately scowled as I heard the front door shut. I left the shower and wrapped a towel around myself, and as I stepped into the bedroom, my feet froze in place.

“Found the black,” Carver drawled from his chair as my eyes glued to the black lingerie set complete with leg garters and black pantyhose. It had been the most expensive purchase of the day, yet I’d never planned on actually wearing it.

Lady Luck truly hated my guts.

“You gonna leave again?” My gaze flitted between him and the door. “Give me privacy, at least?”

“Nope.” His broad, jean-covered legs stretched out as he leaned back further, looking as relaxed as ever.

“And if I say no?”

Two long fingers stroked the arm of the chair, a faint glimmer in his eyes that was a toss-up between the iridescence of atala wings and an extremely hot inferno. “You won’t.”

I took a step closer to the set. “What makes you so sure?”

“Arrogance.”

Was that…had he just admitted a fault? My brow arched as I took another step. “Is that so?”

The same two fingers inched up to his lips and swiped across the bottom. “Self-indulgent curiosity.”

One more step. “And?”

“Depravity.”

Blue eyes flared as I unwrapped the towel and let it fall to the floor. “Anything else?”

His voice lowered, turning to gravel as I reached for the set. “Recklessness.”

“Hmmm…”

His hand shifted to his jeans, stroking the outline of his cock. I swallowed.

“History,” he added.

I finished sliding the straps into place, then sat on the edge of the bed as I began rolling the stockings up to my knees.

When I was done, I leaned back on my elbows and crossed one leg over the other, thankful for the black coloring that covered any evidence of how I really felt while looking at him—the muscles and intricate lines of ink, the dirt marring his sun-kissed skin, and the closely cropped dark beard and equally dark brows.

God, I should have never come back to town.

“Lie down.” Carver thumbed the button of his jeans and popped it open with one hand, yet made no move to get up. I laid back slowly, watching his chest move with his steady breaths while my heart thudded out of control. “Spread your legs.”

Again, I followed his orders while my chest and head went to war over the why .

“Use your fingers. Tell me how wet you are.”

My lips parted, my brain fizzling out in that war against my chest. “W-what?”

The zipper of his jeans hissed as it slid down. “I want you to touch yourself and tell me how wet you are, Ly.”

My hand stopped mid-stomach. “You told me I couldn’t do that.”

He smirked. “I’m giving you the go-ahead to break that rule if I’m the one watching you do it.”

He held my gaze as my hand inched beneath my damp panties while he did the same, grazing over a strip of hair as his hand slid beneath his jeans.

“Do you feel powerful knowing you can tell me to do whatever you want?” I went lower, meeting my soaking core right as his hand grasped his cock under his boxers.

“Lyra,” he warned, slowing his strokes. “Tell me—”

“Is that what you want from me, Carver?”

“Ly—”

“Am I the submissive wife you dreamed of? Someone that you can fuck however and whenever you please?” His hand stopped moving as his jaw clenched.

I pulled my hand free and rolled onto my stomach.

“Let me make this clear, Car . I may have signed papers that grant you freedoms I would’ve never allowed to happen again between us.

But make no mistake, what I feel for you is nothing like what it was ten years ago.

” His fist curled in along the arm of the chair.

I fixated there, unable to meet his eyes again as the next words broke free from my chest. “I hate you, Carver Roland.”

The chair slammed back against the wall as he stood. I shuffled back on the bed as his erratic breaths filled the space between us. He lifted a finger toward me, then bared his teeth as he closed that finger in a tight fist and stormed out, slamming the door behind him.

Days went by, and the only pieces of evidence that Carver hadn’t left were his untouched truck, the smell of weed mixed with oak and leather that lingered from the spare room, and the takeout containers left out on the counter, never exceeding one at a time and always in the same spot.

Even my roommate from a few towns over, who was a female, wasn’t as clean as Carver was.

I figured his parents had a hand in maintaining his bedroom when we were teens, but now…

Now I could see I’d been completely wrong.

The first time he left food on the counter was the morning after I told him I hated him.

I thought he just didn’t bother cleaning up after himself, but then that meal was gone and a new one was in its place by the time I’d gotten dressed in more of his clothes.

I spent the rest of that day searching inside the house for cameras like he had out in the woods, but found nothing.

Either he was watching me and avoiding me intentionally, or I was missing his meticulous schedule that had yet to shift over the course of five days.

I went out to the porch and leaned forward on the wooden railing.

As I opened my nearly empty pack of cigarettes, my focus shifted between the treeline and my car.

If he saw me get in it, as if I was going somewhere, then I’d finally find out why he was so hard to run into lately.

My thighs pressed together as I raised the flame to the end of my cig.

He’d chase me down and shove his fingers down my throat or in my pussy, all while waiting for me to give him that two-letter word.

One simple fucking word I had yet to tell him when it mattered. Part of me doubted it would do a damn thing. He loved to goad me about how many lies I told, yet failed to acknowledge that he did the same. Only, his lies hurt more.

Much more.

A horse whinnied from the barn, and I squinted, checking for tattooed limbs, or a cropping of dark brown hair. Something . The horse made another noise, and I straightened. I knew little about horses, but that sound—

A crash ripped through the air, and I tossed my cigarette in the bushes before darting toward the barn.

“Carver?” I shouted, but saw no one.

I pushed the heavy doors open right as a huge black horse reared back on its hind legs in one of the stalls. My hands shot up as I neared the stall door.

“Woah, easy.”

The horse made a snorting sound, mixing with something that sounded like he, or she, was panicking. With even, steady strides, I stepped closer to the enclosure. The horse whipped its sturdy body, shaking the wooden walls and rearing back again.

“Hey, girl.” Definitely missing a dick. “It’s okay.” I kept my hands level with my head and followed her eyes to the ground where her hooves were stomping.

“Oh, sh—”

The back door of her stall flung open, and the horse bolted out right before a whooshing sound rippled through the thick air. I stood frozen to the spot as red splattered along the hay bales, not two feet from where I was on the other side of the closed gate.

“That was a—”

“Coyote,” Carver finished as he tucked a gun into his waistband. He raised his hat and swept his forearm across his brow. “Bee hates ’em more than the others, it seems.”

“Bee?”

“My horse.” Carver examined me, his eyes stopping on the scabbed-over cut on my knee. “She hurt you?” If my feet hadn’t already frozen to the spot, they would have frozen then, because he almost sounded…like he gave a damn.

“No-ope.”

“No-ope?” He scratched the back of his head and walked into the stall, then leaned forward on the metal gate, ignoring the dead coyote completely. “You sure she didn’t knock your head, or is that a new word?”

I folded my arms and straightened, trying my best not to search his hand for the matching cut to my knee. “I meant, ‘nope.’”

“Okay.” His tongue darted across his bottom lip. “Did you come in here to ride her?”

“N-uh uh.”

“You’re avoiding using ‘no,’ aren’t you?”

“Nope.” Fuck . I was.

He smirked. “Right.”

“She sounded like she needed help.”

“You’re not even wearing pants, Ly.”

“Your pants don’t fit me, and it seems like you hid my clothes. Even the ones in my car.” I positioned my hands on my hips and waited.

“You callin’ those things ‘clothes’ is cute.” I scoffed as he continued. “Use a belt. You look better in my clothes, anyway. Always did.”

My stomach did that odd, fluttering thing I hadn’t felt since… fuck . Since high school. I jutted my chin at the bleeding animal to make him stop looking at me like he was. “What’re you doing with that?”

“Same thing I do with the others. Haul ’em out and bury them in the woods.”

“Others?”

A sly grin spread across his face. “I told you—the coyotes around here get hungry.”

I scoffed. “Thought you were the coyote that was hungry.”

His eyes darkened to that dangerous shade of blue—the inferno.

He reached through the gate and latched onto my shirt, then yanked me to him.

Only an inch of space and several thin metal bars, one level with my chin, divided us.

“I’m worse than them, Ly.” His husky voice rattled through my skin, leeching the sturdiness from my bones. “I’m ravenous.”

Car’s focus darted down to my lips and the breath caught in my lungs as I remembered how well they fit on mine. How warm and soft, yet firm and demanding his kiss could be. I found myself leaning in right before he released me and turned to the coyote.

“Bee’s fine now. It’s Jamie you need to worry about. He says he’s coming by for his things.”

My rapid pulse seemed to falter. “Wait, that means—”

“Yep.” The coyote dripped blood from its gaping mouth as Carver pulled it through the other end of the stall. “Time to be my wife.”