Page 22 of The Invite (The Massacre Ball #1)

Nessa

I can no longer keep the memories at bay.

They tear past the locked cage in my mind and swim to the forefront. Until the past blurs with my present. I slip and submerge into the memories.

“I’m-m sorry,” I stammer, my toes curling as I fight to stay frozen. “Don’t stab me. Please. Don’t.”

An ugly sob slips without permission from my lips.

Why can’t they trust me?

The hand between my legs pauses but doesn’t remove the weapon.

“Don’t stab me. I-I won’t tell anyone,” I plead. My vision turns hazy and I see the four cracked walls with dry paint peeling off them and surrounding me. “You can’t h-hurt me.”

I slump forward when the knife goes away and strong arms catch me before I can fall. Who is that? My mind can’t recall and feels cloudy.

I’m full-on sobbing, the walls closing in on me.

I can’t breathe. I’m stuck.

Trapped within this god-awful room.

Why do they keep locking me? How long do they plan to keep me here?

“Let me out,” I shout. “Please… I. Won’t. Tell.”

My body is whipped around but I can’t see anything. A tightness grips my jaw and yanks my head back.

“Nessa.” An unrecognizable and new voice says.

Did they bring someone to torture me?

The pitch blackness doesn’t allow me to see their face. So, I blindly grab their biceps and hoarsely beg, “Help me. You have to let me out.”

“Fuck.”

Why is he cursing? Despair crushes my chest. Whoever it is won’t save me.

I sway when my wrists are seized, shifted higher, and my hands are pressed against something warm with a pulse.

I skate my fingers over it and it’s someone’s neck.

My palms are inched higher until I’m cupping a face.

Their cheeksare angular and sharp. I tremble, sliding closer until a spicy scent fills my nostrils.

“Look at me.”

But I am.

“Nessa.”

Why is he repeating my name over and over?

“Damn it, Nessa,” he growls. A fist pulling my hair hard. “Look. At. Me.”

I jolt so hard as though someone smacked me and blink rapidly, forcing past the fogginess and adjusting my vision to the darkness.

A chest covered by a soft hoodie fills my sight and I travel my gaze up a thick neck with an Adam’s apple over a square and gritted jaw into a pair of rich black eyes.

They peer straight into my soul.

Intensely.

Menacingly.

Intriguingly .

Augustus. My sinister monster. Clarity and coldness blast into my senses but memories of the past don’t come. Wasn’t he wearing a mask? The last thing I can recall is him pushing the knife against my pussy and then… blank .

Oh my god! Did I black out?

What did I do?

Does he know my secret? Did I tell him?

No, he wouldn’t be staring like I’m a mystery with questions swimming in his gaze if I said something.

He most certainly wouldn’t be touching me if he knew the truth.

I realize I’m still cupping his sinful face—for the first time—and try pulling my hands back, but he clasps them tighter. He walks us backward until my back presses against the wall once more. He doesn’t stop moving until we’re both flush from head to toe. His clothed body against my naked one.

The way he’s watching me doesn’t make me feel like I’m his little prey.

His possession—yes. But his toy—no.

“Augustus,” I whisper, afraid of his silence. His expression. His strangely intimate touch.

“Why the fuck would you use a knife to defend yourself when it’s a goddamn trigger for you?” he reprimands harshly. His cutting tone breaks the stillness.

“I… It’s…” I’m unable to form a response, making my defense mechanism kick in. “Why do you care?”

“You were stabbed by someone close,” he states through gritted teeth. “Who?”

A humorless laugh bubbles up and falls from my throat. “You may have ruthlessly stolen my present and my future but you do not get my past.”

His eyes flicker over my flushed face. Up this close, we can see each other perfectly. There’s no hiding or running away. I become mesmerized by the angles of his face and like before, I’m unable to resist skating my thumb over his cheekbones.

He lets me by loosening his hold.

His chiseled jaw is shaved with a shadow of stubble. As though carved straight from marble. When I graze the corner of his mouth, his thin lips, which perfectly suit him, part slightly and betray how I affect him just as much ashe affects me.

Despite his reaction, he doesn’t stop me.

I have an instinct that any other night, he would’ve.

I become bolder, running one hand down the slope of his throat. It’s exhilarating having my fingers on him. Elated at having free rein on his body. I’m burning up at the feel of his skin underneath my fingertips.

Is this how he feels whenever he has me at his mercy?

The longer I caress him, the faster the last of my haziness dissipates. I’m drawn back to the present as I keep inhaling his cologne with each gulp.

Maybe he knows it and that’s why he’s given me freedom to touch him.

What I don’t understand is why his flavor of violence evokes a different reaction than the one I’ve suffered before. Augustus is just a stranger; they weren’t. He draws me toward him like a moth to a flame even though I know I’ll get scorched.

No, he forcefully yanks me to him until I have no choice but to burn.

He proves it when he utters in revulsion, “Your past is getting in the way of my fun, Miss Nessa.”

I glance up from his mouth and swallow hard at the dark lust crossing his pupils. It causes my hands to drop to either side of his torso.

Twirling a tendril of my hair around his finger, he utters, “That makes it my business to know.”

“Sounds like you’re starting to care for your little prey, Mr. Grayson. I thought your intentions weren’t pure and you wanted to break me, not heal.”

I immediately regret implying I’m broken and damaged, but the cat’s already out of the bag. What’s the point in hiding?

“I do want to break you for every transgression you’ve committed against me since you stumbled into my life despite my warnings, Nessa,” he admits in a raw and guttural tone.

“I want to bruise you, make your beautiful body my canvas of marks and colors. Not to ruin you but to mold you into my perfect toy.”

“I’ll never be your toy,” I seethe madly.

“Then explain this, what does it make you when I come here every night, finger fuck and eat your pussy, and then leave after I’m done making you see stars?

” he mockingly asks with a cruel glint in his eye.

“You’re nothing but my dirty little fuck toy when I play with your wet holes for my amusement. ”

Shame colors my cheeks but I have no comeback.

He’s right.

I’m nothing but a toy for his sick games.

Curling his hand around my nape, he tangles his fist in the base of my head and tilts it back. “Tonight, I’m making an exception.”

“What?” His words throwing me for a loop.

“Stay here.”

My eyebrows draw together in confusion at his abrupt command.

He turns and disappears into my kitchen. When he returns a few seconds later, there’s another knife in his hand. Pulling me from where I’m pasted against the wall, he picks me up, making me wrap my legs around him.

Without any explanation, he carries me up the stairs with a single arm underneath my hips, like I weigh nothing at all, and into my bedroom. Dumping me on the bed, his body follows and he drapes himself over me.

This isn’t him.

Augustus and cuddling don’t sound right in the same sentence. But that’s exactly what he’s doing as he cocoons me with his body. His forearms rest on either side of my head while my thighs press against his hips.

“What’s happening?” I ask in a small voice.

“I need you to trust me.”

My brows hit my hairline, making his lips twitch.

“I can’t have you scared of a ghost from the past, little prey,” he explains, tracing my collarbone with a finger. Replacing the feathery touch, his hand wraps around my throat possessively. “Only I have the right.”

“You’re scaring me now.”

“I’m not doing anything.”

“Exactly.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t leave until I’ve made you come,” he teases. He leans to brush his lips up to my ear, and confess, “Although, I came tonight to punish you for breaking my rule.”

“What rule?” I mumble distractedly. I’m far too focused on his fingers now inching up the outside of my left thigh.

“The rule of staying away from Ace.”

My jaw drops in shock at him finding that out. “How do you know?”

“Whether or not I’m with you, my eyes are always on you.”

I don’t bother lying, and straight-up beg, “Don’t hurt him. He’s just giving me alift to work until my car arrives.”

“Did he kiss you goodbye before dropping you off?” Augustus probes while skimming his mouth against the crook of my neck. “Or when he picked you up?”

“No. We’re just—” My breath hitches when he lightly bites my collarbone. “—friends.”

“He better not have touched you either, Nessa.”

“He didn’t.” My answer comes out as a gasp because his head dips to my chest and he seals his lips around my nipple.

Swirling it around with his slippery tongue, he sucks it deep and hard. He keeps nibbling and lapping until I’m sure he’ll leave a bruise and an ache behind.

His weight pins me down until I can’t even arch my back.

Biting the tip down with his teeth, he suddenly lets it go with a pop and stares down at me. Then issues his order, “Cancel his lifts from tomorrow.”

His expression screams Don’t you dare argue . So, I don’t. “Okay. I will.”

My legs drop from around his waist when he sits up to a kneeling position. His electric eyes roam down my heaving breasts with one nipple wet and red, to my flat tummy before darkening when they lock on my pussy.

I’m still slick and swollen with need.

“Did you like it when I feasted on your cunt yesterday, teach?” he asks without lifting his gaze from my wet center, licking his bottom lip. “I could still taste your cream when I woke up. It’s all I could think about the whole day.”

Just like I felt the ghost of his talented tongue in every step I took.

The admission lies on the tip of my mouth but doesn’t come out.