Page 13

Baron Dolce

“I picked up some lobsters,” Duke says, sticking his head into the room. “I had them cooked ahead of time. I figured, when in Maine…”

“Thanks,” I say, not looking up from the computer. It’s been three days, and I’ve barely left it. I haven’t found anything new that points to why Mabel chose the name she did. I switch over to the screen where I’m running searches for her coworker.

“Come on, man, you gotta eat,” Duke says. “And you haven’t fed Jane in days.”

“Jane?” I ask, leaning back and tossing my glasses onto the desk. “Shit. I forgot about her.”

“Yeah, I noticed,” Duke says. “I can feed her, if you want. I didn’t want to fuck up your experiments, so I haven’t messed with her.”

“Did you fuck her?”

He scowls at me. “No. Why would I fuck someone else when we came all this way for Mabel? Plus, the whole Frankenstein look kinda freaks me out.”

“I should check on her,” I say, shoving back from the desk. I slip my glasses back on and push past Duke. “Jane! Set the table.”

I start for the basement—one of the only requirements I had for our inconspicuous rental cottage. But before I reach the set of stairs down to the lower level, I find her curled on the couch in the common area. Duke said he hadn’t messed with her, but he must have moved her, since I left her chained to one of the supports in the dank, cement-floored room that smells like mildew and houses the washer and dryer, water heater, and an assortment of cheap beach gear renters can use. Her eyes are blank and staring at the TV, but she slowly drags herself to her feet when I walk in. She stands for a second, sways, and then tumbles onto the floor.

“Shit,” Duke says behind me. “You think she kicked the bucket?”

“She just fainted,” I say, strolling over and poking her with my toe. “We’ll see if she’s hungry enough to crawl to the table when she wakes up.”

I follow Duke to the kitchen, where he takes three big lobsters out of a paper bag, along with a giant tub of boiled corn and red potatoes. I find some plates in a cabinet, set them on the table, and sit. Jane groans from the other room, so I call to her.

“Better get to the table before the food’s gone.”

She staggers in like a zombie, but she manages to wash her hands and serve us before collapsing into her chair.

“Eat,” I say, gesturing to her plate.

“I wasn’t sure if you were allowed to eat,” Duke says to her. “But I figured I could polish off two lobsters if you weren’t.”

“I usually don’t feed her so well,” I say. “You can have the lobster. She’ll be fine with just corn and potatoes.”

“Nah, go ahead,” Duke says to her, offering a small smile. “Bet you’ve never had lobster before.”

She shakes her buzzed head, staring down at the red-shelled creature on her plate.

“Here, you crack the claw like this,” Duke says, scooting over next to her and showing her how. “I’ll be honest with you, I’ve never done this either. Mom always had someone there to open them and get the meat for us. She said it was undignified to get your hands so dirty. But I watched them do it enough to figure it out.”

He holds his hand over hers when she can’t summon the strength to break the tough shell. When it finally cracks, he holds up his hand for a high five. She lifts her hand as if it’s almost too much effort, and he slaps her palm. A hint of a smile ghosts over her lips as she pulls out the meat.

“Give that to me,” I say. “The claw is the best part. It’s too good for you. You can suck out the legs.”

“Dude, the tail is the best part,” Duke says, watching her pass over her hard-earned prize.

He cracks his claw and sucks it down while she works on her second one. I take that from her, as well as the tail when she gets that open. Then I pass her mine and let her get the good parts for me too. By the time she’s done, she’s moving so slowly I’m curious to see if she can summon the energy to feed herself from what’s left of the two shells in front of her. She sucks on the legs while I eat two tails and two claws before giving Duke the other two claws.

He glances at her like he’s thinking about sneaking her some, but she’s busy shoveling potatoes into her mouth like a goblin now. Apparently she’s not too out of it to notice that we’re almost done, and she doesn’t want to miss out on a chance to fill her stomach. She knows when I’m finished, she’ll have to clean the table, and then it’ll be too late to eat, though she’s not above licking the plates like a fucking dog while scraping them.

Disgusted, I excuse myself from the table so I can get back to my research. As I walk out, I hear Duke showing Jane the eggs he found in her lobster. I don’t know how we ended up so different, but I’m grateful for his abilities. He’ll be useful in gaining Mabel’s trust back and nurturing our future hurts to bring us closer. Neither she nor I have any semblance of that in our nature. And in a way, his kindness is more a testament to his strength than his cruelty. Not many men could grow up the way we did with any remnant of softness remaining.

I wonder again about his evasiveness when I asked about his duties for Dad, but that curiosity is quickly eclipsed by that about the two subjects of my latest search. I’m so fixated I don’t even stop to log Jane’s food intake, and I haven’t weighed her for days. I lose myself in my search, combing over the information on Mabel in case I’ve missed anything—of course I haven’t—and her new friend, and the latest victim of the Black Widow Killer.

“Hey.”

I look up to find Duke standing in the doorway. Hours have passed without my notice.

“I’m going to bed,” he says, yawning widely. “You should too. You’re going to fuck yourself up staring at those screens all day and night.”

“Okay, Ma.”

“You can stop working long enough to sleep,” he says. “You don’t have to be Superman.”

“No, I’m Batman,” I say, stretching my arms over my head. My shoulders pop, and I think maybe he’s right about me sitting here too long. I grin at him. “Remember?”

“Course I remember,” he says, pulling a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket.

“Don’t smoke in here.”

He sighs. “Whatever, Ma. I’ll go to the deck.”

He stomps out. After a minute, I hoist myself out of my chair and stretch my back before following. Despite the long hours I’ve been pulling, my body is churning with unspent energy. I need a workout after all that sitting. I find Duke perched on the railing of the back deck, facing out towards the beach, though the fog off the ocean tonight obscures the view. On a clear night, we’d be able to see white caps or the reflection of the moon on the water. Mabel will get a nice view when we hang her over the railing and rape her.

I haven’t been out on the deck since the first day, when I swept the place for cameras, and I’m surprised to see a collection of beer bottles gathered around one of the deck chairs, and a lone bottle sitting on the arm of another.

“Who was out here with you?” I ask, joining Duke at the railing.

“Jane,” he says. “We had a beer after dinner and watched the sunset. Wasn’t much on this side of the house, but the sky was pretty.”

I turn and lean back next to him, counting the beer bottles. I decide he hasn’t had enough that I need to worry about him sitting on the railing like that. The drop isn’t high enough to kill a man, unless he fell at a particularly unfortunate angle, but there are small, twisted evergreens around the deck, and he’d get beaten up pretty badly on the way down.

“Did she get drunk?” I ask, watching him from the corner of my eye.

“A little,” he says, grinning. “She’s so scrawny all it took was one beer.”

“Did she say anything interesting?”

“Nah,” he says, tapping his cigarette. “She doesn’t say much. She just stumbled around on the way inside.”

“Where is she now?”

He takes a drag on his cigarette and blows smoke out into the darkness. “She’s in my room.”

I should have seen that coming, and it pisses me off that I didn’t. At least, I think that’s why I’m pissed.

“Did you fuck her?” I demand.

“No,” he says, giving me look. “Stop asking me that. I told you. I’m not fucking anyone but Mabel.”

“I’ll go put her up,” I say, pushing off the railing. “And get a vape. Those things stink.”

“I wanted to be Robin,” he says, so quietly I almost miss it over my footsteps on the wood.

I stop, my hand on the door.

“Because you were Batman,” he says. “And even when we were… How old? Eight?”

He takes a drag, waiting.

“Seven.”

“Even then I knew I was your sidekick,” he says. “Everyone knew. That’s why no one told me I could be Batman too. We’re twins. We could have worn the same costume.”

“You didn’t want to be Batman.”

“I didn’t even think to ask,” he says. “I knew. Even if no one would have stopped me, I would have known I was a fraud.”

“That’s why you were the Joker.”

“I was the Joker because Dad said Robin was a fag.”

“That’s not true.”

“Trust me, I remember.”

“That’s not why you changed your mind. You were pissed after he said that, and you went and hid in the closet, and I found you. Do you remember what I said?”

He pauses a minute, then uses his middle finger to flick his cigarette butt into the night. It flips end over end, the tip glowing bright before it’s swallowed by the fog. “You said Batman would be fine without Robin,” he says. “But he needed the Joker.”

I cross the deck, wrap my arms around his middle, and pull him backwards off the railing. He twists to throw an arm around my neck and lets me, dropping his feet to the wooden planks.

I steady him on his feet. “Let’s go get our Harley Quinn.”

“She doesn’t want us,” Duke says glumly.

“But she needs us,” he says. “She needs the Joker as much as Batman does.”

“I said I loved her, and she didn’t say it back.”

“Why the fuck would you do that?”

“Because I do,” he says, giving me a look.

“Now she has the power,” I explain, trying to keep my patience.

He keeps looking at me like I’m missing something obvious to normal people. I wait for him to tell me what it is. I don’t like being at a disadvantage, but I am, when it comes to humanity. Duke is the half of us that fills me in on these things.

“She always had the power,” he says flatly.

“No, she doesn’t,” I snap. “I overpowered her the other day. Twice.”

“I’m not talking about brute strength,” he says, genuine patience in his voice, the way it appears every time he wants me to understand some emotional response I can’t quite grasp. “I’m talking about… The intangible. We had the power, and she knew it, so she changed her name and left. But when we started looking for her, it flipped.”

“When I found her, I took the power back,” I counter.

He nods. “Yeah, partly. But she was right the other day. She didn’t come back for us. We hunted her down.”

I don’t like that he’s right, and that I can’t see where I slipped up to give her the upper hand. I think it’s the same as when I fuck someone. The one who wants the other loses face, loses power, while the other remains a superior being, above such baseness. The one who doesn’t want the other has the power. I just need to put us back on equal footing.

“You made her beg like a dog,” Duke says. “That’s something. You humiliated her.”

I don’t like that he’s trying to console me.

“But she was begging me to stop,” I say, nodding as it clicks into place. “She wasn’t begging for us to fuck her. That would have given us the power. Because she would be the one who wanted us.”

“And we both know Mabel will never beg for dick,” he says, his gaze holding mine. “Unless we force her to.”

I shake my head. “She still won’t mean it, so it’s a hollow victory.”

What he doesn’t say is that she will never want us. But she can love us. We just have to show her that we’re worth loving, just as we’ve shown her that she is by going to all the trouble of tracking her down, hunting her, and now, claiming her.

That’s as much as we can do. She is ours. She always has been, and she always will be, no matter how many times she runs and how far she goes. We can claim her, but we can’t beat her. That’s why we’re here. That’s why she’s worth more than all the other girls we’ve ever fucked combined. That’s why we need her.

Because we took out her heart, and now she’s a monster like us.

And that’s what I truly want. Not a girl I can cow and bully and break. I want a partner. An equal. Someone as unfeeling as I am, someone who never grovels or becomes pathetic. If I wanted a doll to play with and discard, I’d content myself with Jane. Superior people naturally seek to control their inferiors. A truly great man seeks to understand so that he might better control his inferiors. The greatest among us cannot be controlled. Not by their superiors, because they have none, not by their attachments, because they understand they are illusory, not by their own urges and emotions.

Leaving Faulkner on her own proved that Mabel was among this class of people.

It did the same for me.

Despite what I said to Duke, I don’t need him. I’m not Batman, and he’s not the Joker. That’s a fantasy, and though it’s one I let him continue because he needs it, I’ve long outgrown it. Just because I don’t need him, that doesn’t mean I don’t want him, though, or that he’s not essential to me. He just helped me see this whole situation clearly much faster than I would have on my own.

“She loves you,” I tell my brother, because that’s what he needs to hear. “She just didn’t want to give you the power.”

“You really think so?” he asks, searching my eyes, as if he can find the truth behind my glasses, as if he doesn’t know that people like me are the reason polygraph tests are no longer admissible in a court of law. Lying comes easy when you know truth is arbitrary. And still, I don’t lie to Duke. It’s in my nature, but against my moral code.

“I know it,” I assure him. “She’ll tell you right now.”

Inside, I find Jane burrowed under the covers in Duke’s bed. I toss her over my shoulder and carry her down the steps into the basement, dumping her on the hard floor. She whimpers and curls into a ball, and I have to wrench her arm away to snap the cuff onto it.

“Can I have a blanket?” she asks, quaking with cold.

The other day comes back to me, stabbing into Mabel’s cold, limp body in that freezer. She felt like a corpse, her skin icy, her eyes blank as I squeezed her throat until she stopped moving. I’ve never cum that hard with Jane.

“No,” I say, turning away and climbing the six stairs to the door. I flick the switch that turns off the bare bulb, leaving her in the dark. Maybe I’ll fuck her when I get back, when she’s cold, as I choke the life out of her. I don’t have to be careful with her, to hold back. It doesn’t matter if she dies. It would be unfortunate to lose her, but she’s not important. If I needed to, I could find another Jane to replace her. There is no other Mabel.

We pull up at the house where Mabel is staying ten minutes later. It’s a big, rectangular beach house with balcony views right on the water, the last house on level ground before the narrow road begins to climb for several miles along the coast. At the precipice, some billionaire recluse’s house sits at the edge, where the land ends in a sheer cliffside, looking out over the choppy Atlantic to an island that’s only visible on a clear night because of the lighthouse there.

Mabel’s aunt divorced her husband and moved here a few years ago, supposedly to be closer to their only son, who was institutionalized on the island just off the coast. In reality, it’s probably because our family had a habit of castrating Darling men and then taking care of their wives in a way they were no longer able to—whether they agreed or not.

Up until now, we haven’t bothered tracking down any Darlings. Driving them out of Faulkner was good enough for us.

“Whose car is that?” Duke asks when we pull into the last spot in the 4-car driveway, beside a Jeep Wrangler and behind a powder-blue Volvo 1800. Mabel lives here with only her aunt and her cat, but my mind flashes to that pink-haired bitch she protected from us.

“Let’s find out.”

We climb out of the car onto the pine needles scattered atop the sandy gravel, heading past Mabel’s vintage car to the door. She ditched her Prius when she left Faulkner, and her new car is one of the few luxuries she allows herself. Her apartment is small and sparse, she only eats at nice restaurants when she’s meeting one of her doomed dates, and unlike most of the girls in our income bracket, she doesn’t flaunt her wealth by collecting frivolous things like designer handbags or shoes. But like her wardrobe, she changed her style of transportation when she became Dahlia Süskind.

I want to know why almost as much as I want to know why she chose that name.

I don’t knock—as long as Mabel is staying here, it’s her house, which means it’s our house, and she knows that. The door isn’t locked, which means not only does she know a lock won’t stop us, but she’s expecting us. I’m not worried about a setup. Mabel’s perfectly capable of trapping us, but the thought of escaping such a challenge only excites me.

I walk into the unfamiliar house and turn towards the warm, ambient light coming from the large, open room on our right. It takes a second for my eyes to adjust, to make sense of what I’m seeing. Dozens of candles flicker around the room, on the mantel and side tables. Two wine glasses sit on the coffee table amid a half dozen more candles.

Mabel is on the couch, barely visible under the broad body of the middle-aged man fucking her.

I knew she wasn’t a helpless animal who would hide and na?vely hope we wouldn’t find her. I told her we were coming for her, and she knows I don’t make idle threats. I let her wait three days, picturing her here, cowering with fear, not knowing when we’d make good on our promise.

But she was never the prey. She’s a black widow, invisible and deadly, more diabolical than I gave her credit for.

She peeks out from under his arm, like she’s been just waiting for the door to open. For all I know, she’s been fucking other men for three nights in a row, waiting for us to walk in on her and see how little she cares. She’d probably keep fucking them until we came, no matter how long it took, just so she could see our faces when she drove the knife in.

I’m done letting her have the power. She doesn’t get to control how this goes, and she sure as hell doesn’t get to fuck other men. Not anymore. It was one thing before we showed our faces, when she didn’t know I was watching, and it had nothing to do with us.

This isn’t about her need to punish men for all they’ve done to her. It’s about us.

This is personal.

There will be no more other men. Not behind our backs, and not in front of our faces.

Especially not in front of my brother.

Not ever.

She made her move. She made her statement.

It’s time to answer.

I turn to Duke, who stands staring, slack-jawed with shock.

“Give me your knife.”

I cross the room in a few strides. I’m almost upon them when the man finally notices, too busy fucking my prize to have heard us come in. His head swivels our way, and he has one second to register what’s happening, his eyes going wide, before I grab what’s left of his sparse hair, yank his head back, and slide the blade across his throat.

It’s not the clean kill I wanted. I can tell that right away. The knife is too small for the job, bigger than the surgical blades I use on Jane but not the kind of hunting knife made for a kill of this magnitude. Blood splatters onto Mabel, who looks as disgusted and horrified as she does shocked. The man gurgles, his arms shooting out, his bare ass flexing. I make a second pass with the knife, the blade sticking in the tough cartilage and bone of his neck. I jerk it through with all my strength, and an entire wave of blood erupts onto the girl under him.

She shrieks, holding up her hands as if to ward him off.

It’s too late though. I drop his body, and it collapses onto her, still spasming and twitching, his head lolling at a grotesque angle, his pants around his knees. Her eyes roll back, and the revulsion on her face is pure and raw, the absolute beauty of such intense, unmasked emotion making my head spin and my cock stiffen.

Duke runs over and jumps onto the sofa on his knees, bouncing the couple under him. “Mabel’s fucking a dead guy,” he crows, shoving the guy down with each bounce. “His dick’s still inside you, isn’t it, little sicko?”

“Get him off!” she cries in pure panic, bracing her palms on his shoulders and trying to shove the corpse off her.

“You’re doing a good job of that all by yourself,” I say.

“Can dead guys cum?” Duke asks, cackling as he drops onto his hands and knees, thrusting his hips against the other man’s ass to push him harder into Mabel.

“I don’t think so,” I say, tapping my chin as if pondering the idea. “Should we find out?”

“Does it feel like I’m fucking you, little fairy?” Duke asks Mabel, staring down at her blood-soaked face while he grinds the body into her. “Can you tell that’s a dead man’s dick and not mine?”

“Please,” she gasps out. “I’ll do anything you want. Please!”

“Anything?” I ask, cocking my head.

“Yes,” she cries. “Please, Baron. Get it off me!”

I grab the back of Duke’s shirt and haul him up. Mabel arches her back, trying to push herself up, away from the dead man. I roll the body off her. It tumbles to the floor in the heavy, solid way that only a body can, jostling the coffee table and knocking over one of the wine glasses. His puny, half-flaccid erection pokes up like a finger inside a condom from under the paunch of his gut.

“This is on you,” I say, casting my gaze away in disgust. “We both know the fate of any man who touches you. They don’t call you a black widow for nothing.”

“You’re a monster.”

“We’re your monsters,” Duke says.

“Kneel over him,” I command of Mabel.

“What?” she asks, her voice thin with shock.

I point to the body. “You fuck another man, you face the consequences.”

When she doesn’t move, I grab her hair and drag her off the blood-stained sofa, hurling her onto him. I’m rewarded by the sight of her scrambling to rise from him instead of obeying.

Disobedience brings punishment. Mabel knows that, which means she wants to be punished, to be hurt, as much as I want to hurt her for what she did.

I flip her over, so she’s lying face down on his corpse, and yank up her skirt. She flails to get away, rising onto her knees, but I slam a palm to her back, shoving her face into him. She cries out, still fighting me. She’s not wearing underwear, though, and it only takes a second to open my pants and notch my cock against the entrance to her tight heat.

“No,” she screams, writhing frantically, her pussy clenching, trying to lock me out of what’s rightfully mine. I shove against her resistant flesh, but I can’t get it in, which drives me out of my fucking mind.

She’s so tight I want to cum before I’ve even begun. It’s not just about the tightness, though. If that’s all I was into, I would have fucked virgins like our mule Colin Finnegan, who had a reputation for preying on barely pubescent girls. But even in high school, age didn’t matter much to me. Sure, I fucked some freshmen when I was a senior, but I also fucked seniors when I was a freshman. The girl who stuck is one who’s two years older than us. It’s not her age. It’s the fact that Mabel is always tight, always dry, always unwilling. That’s what gets me off.

The trick, the challenge, for the rest of our lives, will be finding the balance that keeps her happy enough to stay, but resistant enough to conquer. That’s where Duke comes in.

“I believe you have something to say to my brother,” I growl, yanking her head up by the hair.

“What?” she chokes out.

“He says he asked if you loved him, and you lied. Tell him now.”

“I hate you,” she snarls.

“You love us exactly as much as we love you,” I say, and I use every bit of force inside me to slam myself home inside her.

Her breath catches audibly, and her entire body clenches around me so tight it hurts, and I see fucking stars.

“Say it,” I growl.

“No,” she gasps out.

I drag my cock back out of her dry cunt, relishing the banshee shriek that tears from her throat. I ram back in, gratified that she’s not loose or even wet from fucking that asshole. The realization that he got to fuck her dry makes me nearly lose my mind though. This is only for me. Even Duke doesn’t fuck her without lubing her up first.

“Say it.”

I yank my dick out, then slam it to the hilt inside her a third time. Her back arches, and she shrieks in pain, squirming to free herself. I yank her hips up again, plowing deeper. Her bare cunt grips me, trying to lock me out again, but I force myself to the hilt. Her sweet, agonized screams fill my ears, the only music that makes sense to me. The rest is just noise.

“Go get her aunt,” I order Duke.

When he’s gone, I shove Mabel’s head down on the man’s bloody throat, punch into her cunt, stretching it to the limit around me each time I stuff my cock to her depths.

“Please, please,” she chants under me with each thrust, her face a wreck of her own tears and the man’s blood and her hair sticking to both.

“No,” I growl. “You’ll take your punishment the way I say you will. Now open your eyes and watch the life drain out of his body.”

“No,” she cries, squeezing her eyes closed.

I drag her head up by the neck this time, shaking her to make her obey. “Look what you made me do.”

“I’m sorry,” she whimpers.

I shove her face into his neck, into the bloody mess, fucking her hard and fast, relishing the friction of her protesting cunt.

“You should be,” I say. “That wasn’t how I wanted my first kill.”

The truth is, there’s no life left to drain out of him, only blood. I’ve dreamed of this day since I was five years old, and I didn’t even get to see it. Not really. He was facing Mabel when I slit his throat, and she probably didn’t even see it, the precious moment when life blinked out of his eyes. She was too busy panicking to enjoy it, if her eyes were even open.

I shouldn’t have wasted it. When I finally killed a man, I wanted to savor it, to treasure it. But she fucked all that up, and now she’ll pay for that as much as she pays for fucking someone without my permission. She didn’t ask to meet the men she did in Tennessee, but I allowed it to continue. That was my implicit permission.

This was outright defiance.

I fuck her harder, rougher, mercilessly, while she sobs and writhes under me, trying to get away from both me and the dead body under her. The body of the man we both killed.

Duke returns with her aunt, holding one hand over her mouth and the other around the back of her head, steering her in front of him. When she sees us, she makes a cry of protest that would be loud if it weren’t muffled by his palm.

“What should I do with her?” Duke asks.

“Fuck her,” I order. “I’ve got Mabel.”

Duke pushes Mrs. Darling away. “No way, dude.”

Mrs. Darling draws a breath and opens her mouth like she’ll scream. That gets him.

Duke clamps a hand back over her mouth and squeezes her cheeks until tears spurt from her rolling eyes. “Scream loud enough for the neighbors to call the cops, and they’ll see what your niece did to the last man who fucked her,” he says, shaking her toward the body cooling on the floor under us.

She whimpers, and he shoves her over the arm of the armchair. She doesn’t scream, though. That’s Mabel’s job.

“Fuck her,” I command my brother. “You don’t have to wait for Mabel. She didn’t wait for you.”

I know the reminder of his hurt will make him lash out, and it does.

“You’re right,” he says, turning to Mabel. “You wanted us to see you fuck another man? Now you get to see how it feels.”

“You can’t!” Mabel cries. “She’s my aunt.”

“So?” Duke asks, an unhinged grin on his face. “We fucked your mom.”

“Be a good girl, and tell him you love him, or she gets fucked too,” I tell Mabel, stroking her hair back from her ear. I’m a magnanimous god, willing to let her choose the sacrifice she makes to show her devotion.

She grinds out the words. “I. Hate. You.”

“She’s probably tighter than you anyway,” Duke says. He yanks up Mrs. Darling’s t-shirt, yanks down her underwear, and plows into her.

She shrieks, but not as loud as my girl, my little monster. My demon. Duke has his, and now, I have mine. Pride swells in me, and I brush Mabel’s hair off her back and grip her shoulder, nice and light, so I’m not bruising her. I push in slower, letting her have some pleasure too, letting her feel how full I make her without pounding into her depths, where I know it hurts, or going quick and shallow to get the most friction.

She whimpers, fresh tears sliding from the corners of her eyes.

I smile and do it again, in and out, in a slow, measured pace, fucking her on the corpse of the last lover she’ll ever have who doesn’t carry our name.

“Does that feel good, little monster?” I ask.

“No,” she whispers. “I hate it, and I hate you, and I will always, always hate you.”

“Good,” I say, giving a vicious thrust to the hilt, making her core clench and her body try to curl in on itself. “That’s what makes us both cum.”

“I will never,” she seethes.

“You sure about that?” I ask, sliding out nice and slow, knowing it will drive her mad that she loves it, that along with the blood on my cock from taking her dry, her arousal is now glistening. She always did worry about being crazy. I love to prove her right.

Mrs. Darling wails again, and Duke slaps the back of her head. “Keep it quiet, or you’ll be joining that asshole when we bury him in the woods out back.”

“Your cunt is drenched,” I taunt Mabel. “You’re making a mess all over my cock, little monster.”

Her body shakes with a sob, but I know she’ll cum for me if I want her to. We trained her just like we did Gloria in high school and Jane since then, just like you can train a dog. No matter how many women I’ve fucked since her, I never forgot the exact rhythm, the pressure, the pain that she requires. In a way, I guess she trained me too.

The thought pleases me instead of angering me. I’ve won what I want, after all. This time, it’s not a competition. I like that she’s left her mark on me the way I have on her.

“Wanna switch?” Duke asks, cackling as he pumps frantically into his hole without any of the methodical control I’m using to steer Mabel’s reaction.

“No,” I say. “I’m finishing Mabel off this time.”

I don’t usually like her to cum, to get all loose and sloppy on my dick. I always let Duke have the pleasure of her climax. It never mattered to me. But this is personal, just like the man under us. This isn’t about pleasure. It’s about power.

“Whatever,” Duke says, slapping Mrs. Darling’s ass, watching it jiggle as he rams into her hard enough to move the couch. “Like I said, she’s tighter anyway.”

“All pussy is tight if you fuck it dry,” I say, reaching around Mabel to massage her clit while I pump into her wet pussy from the back. “Isn’t that right, little monster? Are you going to admit how much you love us, or let your pussy speak for itself?”

She scrunches up her face, and I shove it deeper into the blood, gripping her hip with the other hand and giving her a few punishing thrusts to bring her back.

“Fuck, I want to cum in her,” Duke says, pulling out of Mrs. Darling. His cock stands straight and stiff, slick and hot from being inside her. He stumbles to us, his jeans around his ankles, and falls to his knees in front of Mabel. He shuffles forward, one knee on either side of the twisted corpse, and lifts Mabel’s face.

Before she can react, he shoves into her mouth. With a groan, he drops his head back, holding her hair in one hand and pumping his thick cock into her mouth. She gags, the sound mixing with Mrs. Darling’s sniffles. I drive into her hard and deep, impaling her mouth further onto Duke with each thrust. Her cunt clenches around me each time she chokes.

“You’re ours,” I growl, reaching down and swiping my thumb in a pool of blood next to my knee. I push it into her ass, my cock jerking when I feel the tight ring of muscle clench at the same time as her walls. A sob wracks her body at the reminder of how much I like fucking her there. Her fear that I’ll do it now, and the knowledge that I could, that I could make her scream in terror and pain as I impaled her, makes a wave of power swell inside me. It lifts me until I tower over her like a god looking down on her, listening to her sob and beg for a mercy only I can deliver.

I drive two fingers in deep, close my eyes and let myself go inside her, relief spreading through my limbs as it pours out with my cum, flooding into her core.

Her body still trembles before me, even if her mind doesn’t yet.

It will, though. She’s too proud to admit it after a defeat like tonight, but she loves me like she loves herself, because we are the same, even though she doesn’t want to admit it. And Duke… Who could help but love him?

“Suck his cum down your throat and swallow it like your cunt swallowed mine,” I croon, stroking her neck. I wrap my fingers around it, rubbing so she’s forced to swallow reflexively. Duke moans and goes still, holding the base of his shaft with one hand and her hair with the other, his eyes screwed closed, his mouth gaping with bliss. I keep massaging Mabel’s throat until he’s done, then drag her off him and roll her over on the floor.

She’s bloodier than I expected, her entire face, neck, and chest bathed in it. I lay my palm in the puddle around us, then run my hand up her thigh, pushing a dripping finger inside her to feel my hot cum filling her.

“Time to get you home and cleaned up,” I say, smearing my thumb through her folds, over her clit, leaving her cunt a bloody gash. My cock twitches, threatening to stiffen again already.

But we don’t have time for more games right now. I put myself away and stand, noting the soaked knees of my pants. The man’s body lies like a bloated white maggot in a spreading pool of crimson.

“We’ll take Mabel,” I say. “She shouldn’t be here, in case the feds really are watching. It would be better to lead them to our place and have them watch us there. There’s far too much DNA here to risk police involvement.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you,” Mabel says, sitting up and scooting back on the carpet, as if she can’t stand to be this close to us.

“This is your fault,” I remind her. “You knew what you were doing. Just like it’s your fault we raped your aunt. And for what? To save yourself a little pride? It’s not like I even asked you to lie.”

She glares at me from the red mask of blood covering her face. She looks gruesome and terrifying. She’s never been sexier.

“Go on,” I say. “Take some accountability, or it’ll be her blood I fuck you in next time.”

“Okay,” she says quickly. “Okay, I’ll come. As long as I can bring Seeley Boots.”

“What about… That?” Duke asks, backing up from the corpse.

“We can’t carry it out, in case they’re watching. The soil isn’t good for burying a body here anyway. Too rocky.”

“We should take it out in a boat when we’re sure it’s safe, weight it, and drop it overboard,” Duke says.

“We’ll leave it here until we can come get it for disposal,” I say, picking up the knife from where I dropped it. “Too risky to move it twice. Mrs. Darling, clean up this mess and wrap the body for us. Keep it somewhere that it won’t attract attention, a freezer or basement if you have one. I’ll be watching. If you try to go to the police, we’ll come back, and this time, we’ll fuck you with the knife blade before our dicks. Then we’ll take turns fucking your bloody hole and tearing it bigger and bigger while you bleed out. Fucking a woman to death seems like the ultimate act of a god. I’ve always wanted to watch the life fade from someone’s eyes while they died, and I missed my chance there.”

I gesture with the tip of the bloody blade toward the heap on the floor.

Mrs. Darling nods, her eyes red-rimmed and grim but filled with understanding. There’s a reason she fled Arkansas. She knows who we are, and she knows better than to disobey us.