Page 11

Duke Dolce

“It’s time to go,” Baron says, snagging the gun from my hand and tucking it into the back of his pants.

Regret stabs through me, straight into my chest. I’m not ready.

The pain sinks down into my gut in a dull throb, all the way to my groin. My cock strains, my balls aching. Watching my twin fuck Mabel with a popsicle was enough to drive me out of my mind, if I wasn’t already gone. I don’t know how he held himself back from dropping his pants and slamming to the hilt inside the sweet relief of her cunt.

I didn’t even get that much, barely touched her.

Now I feel myself slipping closer to the edge, the place where my demon dwells, the delicious madness beckoning. I’m glitching, moving back and forth between him and myself too rapidly for safety. If I go out into the world like this, even I don’t know what I’ll do.

Mabel will make it all go away. She always did. She’s the only one who can.

And after all this time, she’s here, in front of us, so close I can touch her. I don’t want to go yet, to leave without getting my fill. I want to tumble across the floor with her, roll in her until her scent covers every inch of me.

Baron likes to play with his food.

I like to feast.

“I’m not ready,” I say, never taking my eyes off Mabel. She shrinks away, and my demon flares. I wish I could say he takes over, that I don’t know what happened when I come back, that I black out. But I’m not so lucky. When he takes over, I’m there, forced to sit in the corner of my mind and watch, like I did so many times at Thorncrown. Dad thought if I could take my punishment like a man, it would prove I was one.

“She’s had enough,” Baron says, which really means he’s had enough, and he wants to leave her terrified of what’s to come. But I didn’t come this far to play games and taunt her.

“I haven’t,” I say simply.

I hear him let out a huff behind me, and I know if I looked up at him from where I still kneel, he’ll have the same look in his eyes that he did after he realized she hadn’t shot me, that I wasn’t physically injured. Any other hurt doesn’t count in his eyes.

“I’ll give you an hour with her,” Baron says. “That’s for both of you. Finish what you need to say and do for us to start over. I expect compliance when I come back.”

He turns on his heel and walks out, slamming the heavy freezer door behind him.

“Shit,” I say, rubbing my arms, which are already covered in goosebumps. “Are we locked in here?”

Mabel doesn’t say anything, just stares at me with glassy eyes. I go back to the moment we saw her outside, when I took in the sight I’ve waited for all this time, longed for, gone mad for. Baron told me he’s been watching her through cameras, and he offered to let me look, but I didn’t want to. I wanted it to be real when I saw her. I wanted time to savor it, to savor her, in the flesh.

I haven’t laid eyes on her in two years. Everything else was forgot when my gaze finally landed on the small, waifish figure that was so familiar and yet, so far gone. A body I remember like it’s my own, every inch explored, and yet, I can’t remember exactly how her skin felt under my palms, how it was different from every other body I’ve touched, why I still crave it when I can’t even recall the name or face or body of any girl since.

I want to remember.

I want to lick up the popsicle juice pooling around us because it’s been inside her, drink it off the floor like a man dying of thirst; I want to roll in it, to gather it in buckets and dump it over my head, letting it shower over me, bathe me in blood. I want to lick it off her thighs drop by drop, suck every last drop from her cunt like I will never get enough. And when it’s gone, I want to taste her, to hear her whimper and beg, to feel her cum spread over my tongue like honey and lis to her sighs of bliss until she can’t hold back the words she really wants to say.

I crawl toward her. She whimpers, cowering away, curling tighter into a ball. When I reach the puddle around her, it only looks like it’s still liquid, slick and red. It’s slippery ice under the heel of my hand. But I’m not afraid of being locked in here. Baron will get us out. And if for some reason he doesn’t… I have Mabel to keep me warm. If we die, we die together, and that’s all anyone can ask for—to die in the arms of the one they love.

“Mabel,” I say, reaching for her. “My little fairy.”

She lets out a squeak and arches away, as if she can’t bear the thought of my fingers on her, touching her. I forgot she hated that. We ignored it so thoroughly, touched every inch of her a hundred times, that I thought she’d got over it. But maybe she hasn’t.

When I reach for her again, she scrambles into the corner, pressing her back to the shelves and drawing her knees up. I can see her pussy, bare and leaking red juice, between her ankles and the Mary-Jane shoes she wears. My cock stiffens, and my head spins.

I lunge for her. She screams, kicking out at me viciously. Her foot slams into my quad, and pain shoots up my leg, but it doesn’t stop me. My demon revels in her hitching breaths, in the panic-stricken realization on her ashen face. But he’s not the type to savor slowly.

I grab her ankle and yank it aside, hauling her forward at the same time. She slides on the metal floor, her eyes flying wide, and then she’s under me. I fall on her, pinning her in place.

I’m not ready for the sensation. Touching her is peeling my skin back, exposing every raw nerve; it’s grabbing a live wire with a bare, wet hand. I hear her shocked inhalation at the same moment I suck in a sharp breath. In a single moment, everything stops. The clamoring demon inside me, my brother leaving us with unknown int, her brother halfway across the country with his damning mouth that feels like nirvana and sounds like every fear I can’t admit to even myself. Touching her makes it all disappear, and I’m glad. I want it all to go away.

For that one moment, everything is calm, still, right. I remember exactly how she’s different, what she gives me, and what I’d give for it.

“Please,” she begs, her body trembling against mine, a delicate spiderweb. And like a web, she’s caught me, trapped me here with her.

“It’s okay,” I mutter, reaching between us to undo my belt.

“Duke, no,” she cries, starting to struggle again, harder this time. It only makes me harder, feeling her give it everything she has, knowing it’s as hopeless as her attempt to start over without us. There was never any world in which Baron wouldn’t find her. He may have been quieter about it, but he was as devastated as I was. Seeing what it did to him was the only thing harder than her leaving.

“I’m sorry,” I say, shoving down the front of my boxers to free my cock.

“No,” she cries again, louder this time, her voice desperate. “Please, Duke!”

“I know,” I say, kissing her cold cheek, bracing my elbow on the floor above her shoulder while I notch the head of my cock to her entrance.

She lets out a strangled sob. “Don’t,” she chokes out. “Please.”

“I’m sorry,” I say again, gripping my shaft in one hand while I grind my hips forward, forcing past her resistance. The tightness of her cunt sends a shockwave rolling through my entire body. Fuck, I want to cum before I’m even inside her. Her pussy is still cold from the popsicle, wet and sticky. A low groan of pleasure rumbles through me, and I force in another inch, drawing a shuddering sob from her.

“God, you feel so fucking good,” I say, drawing out and then pushing back in another inch. “I’ve missed this so much. No one takes me quite like you, little fairy.”

I fuck in and out of her entrance, looking down to watch her pussy stretched wide around my girth. Under me, she’s quaking, tears spurting from her eyes. She braces her palms on my chest, trying to push me back. I knock them away and drive in another inch, needing to be inside her with a madness that’s making it hard to go slow for her. I want to be buried balls deep in the clench of her cunt, to feel her break around me. I thrust again, more erratically, desperate to get in deeper, where she’s locking me out.

She chokes in pain, her breath catching. New tears stream from her eyes, and I lean down, kissing them from her cold, wet cheeks, licking them up like syrup. “It’s okay, baby,” I say. “Just relax and let me in. You can do it. You’ve taken me before. You’re doing so fucking good.”

I drive in another inch, and a high, keening sound tears from her. I drag my cock back and thrust in again. Her walls clamp down on me, and I moan and do it again, and again, gripping her thigh to keep her in place while I impale her, one inch at a time.

“Stop,” she manages through her sobs. “You’re hurting me.”

“I know, baby,” I say, kissing her forehead, her wet eyelids. “I know it hurts. But it feels so fucking good. Just relax for me, and it’ll feel good for you too. Can you do that? Let me in, mia cara. I have to feel you taking all of me.”

She nods tearfully, trying to be brave. I reward her by fucking half of my length in and out of her wet cunt until she relaxes a little, and I can feel her wetness coating me along with the sticky popsicle juice. I give her another inch, and then another, until she curls in on herself, gripping her midsection.

“I can’t,” she sobs. “You’re too big.”

Fuck, she’s wrong though. I’ve never felt something so perfect, so right, in all my life.

“You can,” I promise her, kissing her trembling lips. “God, I fucking love you, Mabel Darling. Take all of me. I know you can do it.”

“No,” she cries. “I can’t, Duke. Please, you have to stop.”

“I can’t,” I say. “I have to feel you. You’re too fucking good.”

I pump into her, going deeper while she cries out and starts struggling again. Her heels dig into the metal floor as she tries to escape, to push herself up and off my dick. I grab her hip crease and drag her back, impaling her deeper.

She screams this time, and I know I’m close. I look down and see another inch. I give it to her in one brutal thrust. Her noises choke off, and she writhes in silent agony while I hold her pinned, watching her face twist into a gruesome mask. I give her a minute before I piston my hips forward, driving to the hilt inside her. She’s everything I remember, impossibly tight, beautiful and ugly and perfect as she fits around me just barely. It feels like I’ll tear her flesh when I sink in again.

“Tell me you love me,” I murmur against her mouth, nipping at her lip.

“No,” she chokes out through a strangled sob. “Please.”

The demon takes over then, and I pound into her hard and fast, wrecking her insides until I feel her come apart around me. Her walls quiver and pulse, and she sobs harder, still telling me no, as if there’s any stopping me now. I can’t hold back. The pressure at the base of my spine ruptures. I brace my knees on the floor, one hand above her shoulder, the other gripping her hip crease, and I watch her pussy stretch tight around my cock as I plunge it balls deep inside her one more time. I throw my head back and squeeze my eyes closed, holding her pinned while I cum, and cum, and cum.

I want to keep filling her until she explodes, until she’s as round and swollen as a water balloon, her belly stretched as tightly around my baby as her cunt is around my cock. I want to give her a thousand babies, so she can never leave me because she needs me as much as I need her. I thrust again and again, erratic and rhythmless, even as my erection flags. I can’t stop fucking her. I’ll never stop, no matter how much it hurts her. It feels too good to stop.

Mabel is still under me, limp, and I know she went away the way she used to. But I kept her with me almost the whole time, and that’s something. After being without for so long, I was gentle compared to what I could have done. Compared to what Baron would have done if he’d wanted. But he let me have her first, probably as a consolation, knowing I’m still bitter about him leaving. He could have gone for her without me, though, and he didn’t. And now that he let me fuck her first, I can’t begrudge him the months he spent watching her. He may have been with her in other ways, but he saved the prize for me.

With a moan almost as tormented as hers, I finally collapse onto her, my cock still buried balls deep, pulsing out more cum every few seconds. My balls are empty, wrung out, and yet, somehow I still have more for her. But for the first time in two years, I’m sated. For this moment, one I know won’t last, the hunger abates. I’ve had enough. She’s enough. And no matter how much I’ve hurt her, I would do it all over again for this one second of stillness.

There’s quiet at last. The demon isn’t clamoring. My mind isn’t racing. I can stop striving, stop seeking, and be still.

I wrap my arms around her, bury my face in her neck. Then, I just breathe.

I breathe, and I wait.

For the thoughts to close back in, to take over my mind. For the thirst to start itching again like a craving for a fix that doesn’t exist. For her to move, to tell me how much she hates me, how much I hurt her.

For my own mind to tell me the same. That I hurt her. That I hate me too.

“Are you okay, baby?” I whisper, already hating myself. I stroke her hair, her cold cheek. When I pull back, a jolt of panic goes through me. Her eyes are open but blank as a corpse, her body cold as one. Her lips are blue, her skin waxy and pale. Only her cunt is hot and alive, far inside, pulsing like embers around my tip.

I slap her cheeks gently, then grip her chin and shake her head back and forth. She would never believe me—no one would—but this hurts me more than it hurts her. Knowing I hurt her makes me hate myself more than she’ll ever know. It makes me want to jump off that bridge she did, to pitch into the pit at the rock quarry like her brother tried to do, to swallow pills like her mother. To find the silence again, forever this time.

I don’t want to hurt the girl I love. It’s the last thing I want to do. But I’m selfish, and I did, and I’ll do it again.

“Baby?” I ask, and even though I don’t want to, I force myself to withdraw my cock from the tight fit of her pussy. It grips me like a glove, and when I drag it out, there’s friction, and then a rush of my cum. It’s pink from the popsicle, like strawberries and cream. The sight makes my groin throb again, and I groan and kneel up, dropping my forehead to her belly.

When she doesn’t protest or move, I slide my arms under her legs, holding her hips while I kiss down her cold skin, over her mound. I swirl my tongue over her clit, and it throbs and stiffens. With a helpless moan, I burrow my face into her cunt and feast.

I don’t eat her slow, savoring the taste. I don’t tease or wind her up. I don’t do anything for her. I do it for me. I suck and bite her clit, dragging it between my teeth. I hold her hips still while I lap at her folds, tugging each of them between my tongue and my lip, feeling the delicate silk, licking them clean. I lift her and tilt her dripping entrance to meet my mouth. I thrust my tongue into her hole, fucking her with it until my tongue is sore. I suck my salty cum and the sweet tang of the popsicle out of her, slurping and moaning, not caring about anything but drinking every drop.

Before I know it’s going to happen, pressure mounts in my groin, and then it comes barreling up my shaft. I barely reach down in time to catch my release. It spills from my cold, sticky tip, and I drag my thumb over it a few times, milking all of it into my hand. I moan into Mabel’s cunt, aftershocks rippling through me. When I pull back at last, her sweet pink pussy is a red, angry color, raw from my ministrations. How long have I been down here?

I lift the handful of sticky white cream and stare at it a second, then smear it onto her flesh, massaging my palm in circular motions until her entire pussy is coated, outer and inner lips, her clit. Scooping up a few globules that escaped down the underside of her ass, I use my middle finger to push some into her pussy, then more into her ass hole. At last, I sigh and lay my cheek on her little mound, my fingers still lodged inside her. I grip her hip with my other hand, squeezing her to me.

“Mabel?” I ask, realizing I lost all track of time and have no idea how long it’s been since she made any sound or movement. “You okay?”

“I don’t know what that means,” she says, sounding so much like her old self, so logical she could never figure out all the shit that makes people tick, that makes them human. She and Baron always made sense. I was the one who didn’t, at least in everyone else’s eyes.

But I know the truth, that I have something she needs, something Baron will never give her because he can’t. Because he doesn’t have the ability.

“Mabel,” I say, shoving my hand up her shirt, needing to feel more of her. “I meant what I said. I didn’t just say it because you made me cum.”

“Okay.”

I turn my head, kissing the scars she left on her upper thighs, the “D” I burned into her just inside the hipbone. For some reason, it’s startling to see it still there after all this time. I rest my chin on her pelvic bone so I can see her face. “You know I love you, right?”

She’s quiet for a long moment. “Okay.”

“What do you mean, ‘okay’?”

“What do you want me to say, Duke?”

“I want… You to say you believe me,” I say, pushing my hand up further, under her bra, to cup her little tits. “I want you to say you love me back.”

“Are you checking me for a wire?” she asks, shifting under me.

“I wasn’t,” I say, moving my hand across her chest to the other side. “Now I am.”

“Why didn’t Baron check when you first came in?” she asks. “I told him the feds are watching.”

“Why would you have a wire?” I ask. “You’re the one they’re after.”

“Am I?” she asks, her teeth chattering so hard I’m not sure if she’s really curious, or if she’s taunting me.

I tigh my hold, and a soft noise of pain catches in her throat. “I know you’re fucking with me,” I say. “It won’t work. I’m not stupid, Mabel.”

“I didn’t say you were.”

I relax my grip and nestle against her belly again. “Good. Because I’m not.”

“I know that.”

“Do you know if you can love me?” I ask, holding her little tit cradled in my palm. It’s still warm, but not as warm as it should be. I press my ear to her belly, hoping her stomach will growl and push away her words, ones I don’t want to hear.

“What if Baron doesn’t come back in time?” she asks, threading her icy fingers through my hair.

“He will.”

“What if he waits too long, and we’re frozen?”

“He won’t,” I promise her. “He wouldn’t make a mistake like that.”

“How sure are you?”

I hate that she has to ask me that, that after we drove across the country for her, she still doesn’t understand it’s because we can’t live without her. She couldn’t even say she believed that I love her. And if she doesn’t think I do, she’ll never believe that Baron does.

“We should get closer for warmth,” I say, lifting up from her. I kick off my jeans and hand them to her, since she’s shivering much harder, her teeth clattering together and her whole body trembling. Without a word, she slides her skinny legs into them. I know they’re still warm from me, and I like that I gave her my body heat, that I helped her. I pull her back into my arms, wrapping myself around her like a blanket. She doesn’t protest, which gives me hope.

“Tell me what it’s been like,” I say, pressing my nose into her hair. “Since you left.”

The smell of her is so familiar it makes my head spin. How could I have forgot? Baron would never forget something so essential. Maybe that means he loves her more, that he deserves her, and I don’t. I’m sure he doesn’t remember her brother’s smoky leather scent better than her peaches and cream.

She’s quiet for a long minute, shivering against me. “It’s been horrible,” she says at last.

I squeeze her against me. “We’re here now,” I assure her, kissing her head. “We’re not leaving you again.”

“You didn’t,” she says, and I realize she’s crying. Mabel was never a crier before.

“We won’t let you leave us, either,” I promise her.

“That’s what I’m afraid of,” she whispers against my chest.

I cradle the back of her head, holding her close. “I’m sorry we missed your birthday,” I say. “I wanted to be here for that, but Baron said we had to graduate.”

She shakes her head against me, a little breath of a laugh escaping her. “I don’t celebrate my birthday.”

“Why not?” I ask, drawing back from her. “It’s a whole day celebrating you. And don’t try to be humble. You’re definitely worth celebrating.”

“It’s a silly tradition,” she says. “If people want to celebrate, they should make it about the mother. She gave birth that day.”

“Yeah, to us,” I say. “And we lived. That’s what we celebrate.”

“We didn’t do anything except passively lie there while she suffered. We weren’t even aware of what was going on. If people want to celebrate us, it should be for an achievement, something we did to earn it.”

My chest swells and a smile stretches across my lips. It makes me so happy to see she’s the same old Mabel, despite the name and location change.

“We earn it by being alive,” I say.

“If anything, I’d rather have my death day celebrated after I’m gone,” she says. “At least on that day, you can look back on all my achievements in life.”

“What’s weird is that we celebrate our birthday every year, but every year, we’re also passing our death day, and we never even know it. Like, today could be the day I die, and for the past eighteen years, I never did anything special at all on this day. I never knew that May 22 was the day I’d die. I went about my business never knowing there was a shadow on it. It’s like someone walking across your grave.”

“You don’t know your death day until after you’re dead,” she says. “But then, wouldn’t you rather be celebrated every year on that day, rather than a day you didn’t do anything and can’t even remember?”

“I mean, I want both,” I say. “If I died young, I’d want people to set my death day aside as a day of mourning for the rest of their lives.”

“With wailers?” she asks ironically.

“You remembered.” I kiss the top of her head again, squeezing her harder. “I fucking love you.”

I wait for her to say it back, but she doesn’t. I tell myself it doesn’t matter. That when she’s ready, she will. That someday, she’ll be the first girl who ever says it to me. The first person who ever loves me.

When Baron finally comes back, and I scramble up and tell him he left us too long, and she’s just about comatose, he gives me a funny look and says, “The door wasn’t locked.”

I tell myself it’s a good thing, because surely she knew that. She works here, so she must have known about the emergency lever to open the door from the inside. And since she didn’t leave, maybe that means she didn’t want to, that she wanted me to fuck her, and cuddle her, and say I loved her. Maybe she loves me back, but she hasn’t forgiven me enough to say it just yet.

And maybe she’ll forgive me for leaving her in there for fifteen more minutes with Baron, so he can show her that he loves her in his way.

But while he’s in there, I wonder.

When I go out front to flirt with the pink-haired chick, she’s not there, and the sign on the door still says ‘closed,’ and I wonder if she’s ever coming back. When I look out the door and see a black sedan in the lot, I wonder if the FBI is really watching Mabel. If they are, and Baron did something to Mabel’s coworker because she was rude to him, I wonder if they’ll connect it with the other murders, the ones in Tennessee.

I wonder if for the first time in our lives, Baron is lying to me, and those people died because they got too close to Mabel, and he didn’t like it. And if he’d lie to me about that, what else is he lying about, and what happens if I get too close to her for his liking?

Would Mabel even care, or is she like Colt, and I’m just a nuisance she’ll indulge a few times to ease her conscience before she gets rid of me?

I wonder if they’re back there plotting, making plans that don’t include me. After all, they don’t really need me. They could have something together. Maybe they’ve had something together all along, and Baron’s lying about not seeing her. It doesn’t really make sense that he’d go to all the trouble of finding her, and tracking her, and going to get her, only to stop short of actually claiming her. I wonder if they’re back there now, getting their stories straight, so I won’t find out.

And most of all, I wonder if, when Baron says he loves Mabel, she says it back to him.