Page 108 of Smut Lovers

? F O U R ?

You Might Not Like What You See

Georgie

W hen Georgie comes to, her hips hurt. Her head feels like it’s been stepped on, laid flat by some giant who tried to puff it back up two sizes too big.

Even still, she leans in closer to the warmth against her cheek. The beating pulse that thrums underneath it. Her breath comes out in a sigh unlike any she’s had in a long time, long before Evan left this past summer.

Her heart beats strong and steady, matching the tempo against her fingertips that lay over an equally strong, hard thigh.

Thick fingers rake through her hair. Even though singular strands keep catching on something, she lets them, because it’s been so long since she felt so good.

It’s then that she smells it.

Metal.

So close she can practically taste it, it lingers in the air like a mama-cooked meal fills the house and lingers in the air around it.

That hand traces her furrowed brow, sticky in some places, slick in others.

She realizes that is what keeps catching in her hair…

that part of his hand. That smell— blood .

Her eyes pop open.

A man sits against the foot of her bed, one long leg kicked out, the other bent at the knee.

Naked.

His cock is hard and not terribly long, but Jesus, it’s thick and veined, and of course it’s the first thing she sees because her head is on his lap as he strokes her hair. She can’t seem to tear her eyes away from it.

Georgie’s never been particularly fond of the male physique—she prefers the softness of women, or at least, prefers the softness of hips that house uteruses, whatever the person’s labels.

In any case, she never thought dicks were anything special.

Not even Evan’s, though it was the most tolerable she’d ever had, but even half-mast this particular man has a pride to his stature and the right to it.

She wouldn’t tell him that though.

Because then she sees the blood.

He drags his fingers to his lips, the ones not stroking her. He licks between them as he looks down at her with heated eyes. He sucks his thumb into his mouth obscenely, lapping at his nail bed like he’s savoring the taste of homemade whipped cream.

For a moment, all Georgie can think about is that tongue.

She feels it under her dress, between her thighs.

He circles it around his digit. She imagines the motion against her hardening nipples.

He makes a sound that melts together, some part growl, some part moan. It drives an electric charge right through her body, like lightning hitting sand to create a perfect Georgie-shaped glass bottle.

She lifts herself off of him, scrambling back, holding her heart against her hand as if she could stop it from racing right out of her chest and through the busted back door. Separating from him leaves her hollow and cold from the loss of his heat. There’s no strength left in her.

She does a double take, looking back at the open door of her room. The wide-open back door beside it. For a moment she thinks that maybe, just maybe, Evan has escaped.

She’s neither ashamed or embarrassed to say that disappointment is a watery, cheap word for what she feels. It’s a hot, angry, and desperate clawing at her skin, her heart like the claws on that fuckin—

She isn’t slick or coy enough to swallow her gasp back up. She eyes the man, afraid to stare directly at him, but she knows it’s him.

It isn’t because he’s got blood all over his chest, dipping in the groves of muscle and flesh there, or because his eyes are the same bright, moss-colored green swimming with gold.

The same color as swamp water when you go in real deep, when it’s got sunlight drifting through the trees. Lighting it up from the inside.

She doesn’t know exactly how she knows, but she does. She doesn’t question it like other people might ‘cause other people don’t know this swamp and don’t know these old tales like she does.

Her Grammie made sure she did.

Her Grammie, who knocked glasses off the counter when Evan raised his voice, threw things when he stood up too fast.

Her Grammie who, when she was in the other room crying at night with her hand to her mouth to keep from being heard, would sing lullabies she wasn’t sure she remembered the words for anymore.

She was here, in the bones of this house. She whispered the words into the back of Georgie’s brain. It made the knowledge stick—just like that blood on his fingers.

There is a part of her that shivers, not from the horror of it—this strange, naked beast man in her house, against her bed with her head in his lap—but from the way his eyes grip her at the base of her spine and try to whisper in her ear.

They offer things she knows she’s never had. Could only have with him, but she can’t tell you what those things are, just that it would be as life-altering to accept them as it would be to walk away.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't , Grammie would’ve said.

He smiles at her, a shit-eatin,’ cat-caught-the-canary smile that pulls crinkles in his eyes at the corners. He’s got a dimple in his right cheek that makes her stomach flip. She doesn’t think it has anything to do with the fact she’s wonderin’ if he ate her boyfriend.

Ex -boyfriend now, she guesses.

Pendejo.

It’s not like she hadn’t been gunning for Evan’s head too, so she supposes she can hardly blame ‘im.

Still, when he looks at her like he is right now, with wild hunger and excitement, it’s a little hard to think straight, let alone care what he did to Evan of all people. While that thought tap dances around her, pops the little bubble of thought that’s still trying to grow. She shakes her head.

Chastises herself.

Georgie, like her mama, sure knows how to pick ‘em.

“Mornin’ sunshine.” He stretches his arms out over the edge of the bed, the muscles in his body flexing.

Georgie doesn’t think it would be a stretch to say he was milkin’ it, not with the way he eyes her, his head cocked to one side, watching every move she makes. She’s too seen, too exposed like this. As if he can see through her dress and likes every bit of it.

It makes her squirm, swallowing hard against the lump in her throat, against the sudden heat of the room. He lets her sit in oppressive silence, though he seems fine. Doesn’t try to move or stop her even as she less obtrusively shuffles closer to the door.

Before she can get too far though, he’s tilting his head to the side, eyeing where she inches back. “I wouldn’t scoot much farther if I were you.”

Dread layers over her arousal in like slushie chunks down her back.

His eyes are alight with promise, amusement trickling out into his cheeks. She doesn’t know this man, but she knows that anything that has him amused just might be the most dangerous thing in the room aside from himself.

Her hand tentatively reaches out behind her.

He raises a brow when her fingers brush against rough jeans. She can practically hear his thoughts, the same way she can hear when Mama or Grammie speaks to her from beyond. A ghost of something. Soft, barely there.

He’s telling her not to do it. That she’ll regret it. That if she’d just listen…

She grips at it, her eyes never leaving his, until she touches the thick muscle and bone of a leg.

Evan’s leg. At least, she thinks it’s his leg, but she isn’t sure ‘cause he hasn’t moved to swat at her hand or grip her by the back of her head or haul her back into that hazy dream-like world of near death.

“I’m tellin’ you, baby.” He shakes his head, a smile twisting his lips, like he likes this. Like this is a game to him.

Georgie hates that it makes her blush. It creeps up her chest and heats under her collar; hates it cause she hates that she might be cursed like all the women in her family to fall prey to men who want to hurt them.

“You might not like what you see,” he warns again.

He doesn’t want her to look.

And because of that, she does.

She wishes she hadn’t.

All she can see is blood.

She turns to look behind her fully. Her brain skips like a scratched up CD playin’ on repeat, the same thought warbling over and over.

Everything is suddenly in a wash of red.

Some bright, some dark, some thick, some still dripping down.

But it isn’t the blood that leaves Georgie floundering on her hands and knees, heaving.

There’s nothing in her stomach, nothing to puke up.

She’s not sure if she should be thankful for that or if she’d rather anything else than the bitter acid that coats her tongue as her body shudders around itself. It rolls through her body, nothing but bile and spit collecting on the floor in the blood that circles her once upon a time boyfriend.

Evan, who reeks of Dial soap to cover his caustic personality; whose breath always smells like Bud Ice; Evan, who puts too much gel in his hair—that Evan—

Evan’s insides are missing—ripped out—not even there anymore, his intestines strung along the dresser like some kind of macabre party banner waiting for her to wake up.

Georgie has to close her eyes again. Nausea comes in waves, one right after the other, pounding from the top of her head down to her toes. She convulses, her body tightening around nothing and retching it all back up again.

She worries it’ll never stop.

She heaves, clenching so much starbursts dance in her eyes. Her head swims. Her fists clench on the dusty wood floor as she makes small, pathetic sounds, and her arms vibrate beneath her.

The man, wolf, wolf-man, moves behind her, but she’s too weak to move.

This stranger, he pulls her hair away from her face, off her back, and her shoulders, holding it loosely at the top of her head.

He’s careful as he collects all her wayward curls, his fingers moving so softly that she can’t tell if she’s shivering from the shock or from the way he caresses the sides of her face as she struggles.

It’s more intimate than it should be for someone keeping her from vomiting into her dead boyfriend's stomach cavity…that he ate.

And she knows he did.

She just knows it .

“That’s alright, get it out.” He rubs gentle circles on her back. “You’ll get used to it.”

The smell doubles back to her. Raw meat and tangy, rusted-out pennies swell on her tongue.

She retches again.

He clears his throat. “Eventually.”

At least he has the decency to sound sheepish there at the end.

Georgie has to close her eyes against the picture in front of her, but no matter how hard she tries, it’s seared into her brain now. The vision of bloody destruction is etched somewhere into the frontal lobe, right behind her eyes, where it plays over and over again.

She tries to breathe through her mouth, tries to ignore the taste of her own insides eating away at her tongue. She wishes she had some fuckin’ water to rinse with.

“Got anything specific you want me to clean ‘im up with?” The man asks beside her.

She turns her head slowly, testing both her resolve and her stomach. When her brain doesn’t jostle around like a jumping bean, she leans back onto her legs slowly, her hands covering her knees. He steps up, steps around her so she has to look up at him.

“What?” She asks, not sure she heard him correctly the first time.

It’s sickening that she wants his hand back on her, comforting her. She says it’s just been too long, that’s all, but Georgie isn’t so sure she believes it herself.

He’s standing, pulling at the sheets, sniffing the blanket. “Sheets, towels, I don’ know, a goddamn rug for all I care, sweetheart. I don’t want you throwin’ up all night. Gotta wrap ‘im in somethin’.”

He nods his head in…that direction.

So she had heard him correctly. She refuses to look again and instead points to the closet. Her mind races, her limbs shaking from either fatigue or adrenaline, she doesn’t know.

Maybe it’s shock.

Could be.

She read somewhere that your body doesn’t know what to do when faced with situations…like these, if there was ever a situation like this. It dumps all these chemicals in your brain and lets you pick one. Fight or flight, the article had said.

Georgie didn’t think she had either in her anymore, not after that.

The soothing tones of her mama’s voice whisper in her ear. Her skin prickles, the tiny little baby hairs at the back of her neck standing on end.

Run.

She can feel her, crouched down beside her. Sometimes it’s like that, where she can feel them, almost like she could reach out and touch them. Like they were never truly gone in the first place.

Run.

She stands on shaky legs and draws in a deep breath, but her legs don’t move.

She hesitates; somethin’ keeps her from movin’ like she should.

Like she knows she ought to, and that scares Georgie.

It scares her because something tries to keep her here, in this moment, to see how it’s all going to play out.

But this isn’t a video game.

There’s no reset button.

She can’t just pull the cord from the back of the machine and plug it back in.

The man steps away from her into the dark walk-in.

Run.

Her mama is screaming now, cryin’ unlike anything she’s ever heard from her, even in life but ‘specially not in death.

She ignores the smell, ignores the sight of the mess on her bedroom floor.

Ignores everything but her pounding heart and the blood that rushes to her ears.

Georgie takes another deep breath, steadier now.

For the second time that night, Georgie runs.