Page 14

Duke Dolce

“I’ve got you,” I say, scooping Mabel into my lap before climbing from the car. “Just relax. You’re ours. We’re going to take care of you now.”

Something inside my chest swells with joy at the prospect.

We did it. We got her. She’s finally ours .

While Baron gets the cat carrier and the duffle of clothes she brought, I carry her inside. I don’t want to stop there, but I have to. Baron says it’s important that we give her choices, and respect what she wants, if we want her to stay. I already lost control and let the demon take over again when I was at her aunt’s. I have to tread carefully now, so she knows I can control myself too.

“Where do you want to sleep tonight?” I ask. “We each have a room.”

She just stares up at me like she’s never considered such a thing.

“You can have her tonight,” Baron says. “I already fucked her.”

She shivers and buries her face in my chest, and I hold her tighter to me. I don’t know what it says about me that right now, all I want to do is lay her down and lick every drop of blood from her skin, every drop of cum from her cunt, until she’s a trembling, sobbing, begging ruin of a girl. Until she snaps and takes over and rides my face until I can’t breathe, until she makes a mess all over my face, and it’s her cum spreading over my tongue and sliding down my throat.

I resist the urge by reminding myself she’s been pushed to her limit tonight already.

“I’m right here, baby,” I whisper into her hair. “I’ll draw you a bath.”

“No,” she says, grabbing onto my neck and cowering closer. “Don’t leave me with him.”

My demon revels in our triumph, and I forget to be sorry that she’s so scared. If she weren’t, she wouldn’t be here. And now I get to comfort her, so it’s a win-win.

Baron sets down the carrier and opens it so Seeley Boots can get used to his new environment. He shrinks into the back of the carrier for a minute before releasing a feral hiss and streaking out of the room and down the hall.

I carry Mabel into the bathroom and close the door behind us. Inside, she starts shaking and clinging to me. “It’s okay,” I promise her, closing the toilet seat and setting her down.

The buzz of electricity inside me heightens to a roar, and I lock the door, so she can’t make a run for it. She looks up at me, her luminous eyes as round as saucers, and I swear I can see her pulse racing in the side of her throat.

“Don’t,” she whispers. “Please.”

My chest squeezes and I waver, my ribs crushing in on my heart when I see that look in her eyes, the terror and hope as she throws herself on my mercy. I turn away and pull back the shower curtain, and she lets out a sharp gasp and slides off the toilet, curling into a ball in the corner.

“Oh, shit,” I say. “Sorry about that. Is this a trigger for you?”

I lift the shower curtain rod, and she makes a high, keening sound and scrabbles harder against the corner, crushing her back into the wall.

I laugh and hold it up, watching her writhe in terror. Sliding it from inside the rings, I let the curtain crumple to the floor. Mabel’s eyes roll back so far all I can see is white, and she lets out the tiniest, most pathetic wail.

“Sorry about that,” I say, grinning and shaking my head. “But don’t worry, I didn’t come all this way to waste your pussy on something I can’t feel. My dick’s the only thing I want to see inside you tonight.”

I open the window, pop the screen out, and feed the rod through, dropping it to the ground outside. Then I turn back with a grin. “See? All gone.”

Guilt twists inside me when I see Mabel’s colorless, slack face. I pick her up and set her in the tub without bothering to take off her clothes. Those will need to be gotten rid of somewhere, and I’ll have to remember to tell Jane to clean the corner, where Mabel left smears of blood on the wall. In the meantime, it’s better to wash the evidence away, so that her clothes won’t be leaving DNA everywhere.

I take the showerhead down and test it on my arm before I turn it on Mabel. Warm water hits her back, plastering her shirt to her skin. I can see her spine, each rung like a ladder, and something about it reminds me of Olive, so skinny and powerless. Holding the water on her with one hand, I gently rub a bar of soap over her back, massaging the suds into her. She drops her head forward onto her knees, and I let the water course over her bloody hair, turning her blonde strands brown, like Olive’s.

I squeeze my eyes closed, not liking the thought. It fucks with my head and makes me wonder all over again if I’m some sort of pedo. If I wasn’t, I wouldn’t be thinking about a kid while I bathe the girl who just swallowed my cum, would I?

Instead of looking at her, when I open my eyes I watch the water pool in the bottom of the tub, churning pink before it swirls down the drain.

One time, right after Christmas, Olive sat in my lap, right on my dick, and it didn’t get hard, so I figured I was okay. But maybe I’m not.

“Look what Santa brought me,” she said when she first came through the door to my bedroom, wearing a pair of race car slippers with funny faces and matching pajamas. “It’s Lightning McQueen.”

“Bet you’re fast in those.”

She glanced back and then tiptoed over to where I was sitting in my gaming chair. “I know they’re not really from Santa,” she whispered. “He’s not real.”

“How do you know?” I asked, crumpling the tissues I was holding into a ball in my palm, so she wouldn’t see.

She rolled her eyes and braced her hands on the arm of my chair, bouncing up and down. “’Cause I’m not dumb.”

“I know the feeling, kid.” I tossed the wad of tissues into the trashcan.

“Besides, I heard Harper saying she donated the Tow Mater ones that Royal got,” she whispered. “I’m glad she gave me these ones instead. Who wants to be a rusty old tow truck? Race cars are cool.”

“Shit yeah, they are.”

She stared at me a second, going still where she stood as she took in my red-rimmed eyes. “Were you crying?”

I scowled at her. “No. Boys don’t cry.”

“I’m sorry Santa’s not real,” she said. “If he was, I bet he would have brought your dad back for Christmas.”

Then she climbed right up into my lap like it wasn’t weird at all.

“What are you doing?” I asked, startled, because I figured girls only did that to feel my dick.

She looped her arms around my neck and looked at me all serious and said, “I’m sorry you’re sad.”

That made me want to cry again, and I wanted to hug her, but I didn’t know if that would be wrong. So I asked, “What about you, kid? Do you miss your dad?”

She thought about that a second. “No,” she said at last. “I don’t remember him. I miss Blue.” She released my neck and curled down against my chest, pressing her ear over my heart and pulling her knees up to her chest, just like Mabel.

I didn’t know what to do, so I rested my chin on top of her head and just sat there.

She said, “If you cry, I won’t tell.”

I didn’t cry then, but for some reason I want to now.

Instead, I drizzle shampoo over Mabel and massage it into her scalp, then tip her head back and let the spray wash it away, trailing white lumps like seafoam down her back. When the water in the bottom of the tub runs clear, I peel her wet shirt over her head, then urge her up so I can tug off her skirt. After stripping off my own bloody clothes, I rinse Mabel one more time, moving the shower head up and down her body, over her shoulders, her tits, her visible ribs and hipbones and the swoop of her skinny waist and belly to the swell of her pussy, already bruising from Baron’s force.

She’s so small, pale and waifish, like a ghost, scarred by her own hand as well as mine, as if she hated herself more than I ever could. It strikes me that I almost never look at girls, admire them. Men are more worthy of admiration. They’re strong, cut, powerful. They work for their muscles, earn them. In high school, when we were kings, we only let those who proved themselves worthy sit at our table and join our elite circle. My brothers and I studied them, decided together who we would let belong. Looking the part was as much a determining factor as money and family name and athletic prowess, so I’ve had time to admire men and choose the best, ones whose bodies were chiseled like marble, who had the discipline required to make themselves superior to others.

When I see a pretty girl, I don’t think about her beauty. I think about how I can make her mine, possess her, fuck her before anyone else. Once I have, she’s of no use to me. Women are not artwork. They’re holes.

I can’t remember the last time I saw a girl naked. She was probably impaling herself on my dick, and I only cared how she felt from the inside, not how she looked. Usually, I don’t even bother taking off her clothes. Lifting her skirt and pulling aside her panties is quicker.

Are they all so pale and insignificant, almost without substance, feathers that could blow over the cliffside and out to sea?

It makes me want to wrap Mabel in sheets of silk and hold her in my arms so she doesn’t float away, chain her up in the basement so she couldn’t if she tried. With her full, bare body stretched before me, I’m too transfixed to think about anyone else anymore. I want to touch every inch of her, explore her with my fingers, tease her with my tongue until she’s screaming my name. But I know that’s not how it would go, especially tonight, when she’s already touched out.

So I turn off the water and hand her one of the towels from the place, scrawny and cheap compared to the big, fluffy ones we use at home.

Home.

It’s weird to think I don’t have one of those anymore. Like Olive, I’m set adrift, borrowing time and a room somewhere I don’t belong. But unlike her, I’m done with waiting. The girl I was waiting for came back to me.

Now she’s standing in front of me, and I don’t have to pray to imaginary gods and indifferent saints that I’ll see her again. She’s here. She’s mine. She’s been delivered, and it’s up to me now—to keep her, to make her happy, to not screw it up. To make her love me, and to not lose her again. To make her my home.

“Come on,” I say, scooping her into my arms. “Let’s get you to bed.”

We lie on our sides in the queen bed, knees almost touching. She tucked the blanket under her so there’s not enough on my side, and cool air blows against my back, but I don’t complain. Tonight isn’t about me.

“Where’s Seeley Boots?” I ask in the dark.

“He went under the bed,” she says. “He doesn’t like new places, and he’s had a lot of traveling already this year.”

“You could have left him with your dad and Colt when you ran away,” I point out. “I heard cats don’t like moving.”

She scoffs. “So you and Baron could catnap him and probably torture him and light him on fire?”

“Hey,” I protest. “We’d never hurt your cat. We’re not psychopaths.”

“You burned my brother.”

“Just his arm, and he’s an asshole,” I say. “Animals are like kids. They’re innocent, so they’re off limits.”

She’s quiet a long moment. “I believe you,” she says slowly. “I said that out of resentment. I don’t really believe you’d light him on fire.”

“But?” I ask, sensing there’s more she’s not saying.

“But I know you, Duke. I know you do whatever your brothers tell you. And I know what your brothers are like.”

“Come on, my family’s not that bad,” I argue. “You know Baron wouldn’t tell me to hurt your cat.”

“I do?”

I’m unsettled by the fact that I can’t answer with certainty anymore. Baron’s mind has always been clinical in its curiosity, and his indifference can be seen as cruelty, but he’s never acted with unfounded malice. He has a code. When someone wrongs him, the punishment is carefully calculated. When he sets out to accomplish something, the pain he causes in pursuit of that goal is inconsequential, but he’s never gone out of his way to harm an innocent bystander just for the pleasure it might bring him. If anything, he’d consider it beneath his dignity. Pleasure for pleasure’s sake has never been his weakness—it’s mine.

Thinking about the timid, broken thing chained in the room below where we sleep now, though, I can no longer be so sure. I can’t rationalize away his treatment of her. Even tonight, seeing him kill a man was less shocking than seeing Jane the first time. The man tonight deserved it. He touched what is ours. Baron’s justice is swift and unapologetic. But Jane never wronged him, and yet, he’s eviscerated her until I could barely get the ghost of a smile out of her when I joked around with her, as if she couldn’t summon the energy for a laugh.

I shiver and scoot forward a little, so the blanket covers another inch of my back. My knees press against Mabel’s, and she stares at me like she’s waiting for something. I reach for her hand, lace our fingers, palm to palm. Her lids flutter, but that slight flinching is the only reaction I get. I remember when we couldn’t hardly touch her without eliciting a panic attack. At least we’ve been good for her in some ways.

I squeeze her hand and ask slowly, the question that’s been on my mind. “Do you think, if you could, you’d fall in love with me?”

“I can’t, so there’s no point in asking,” she says.

“Why not?” I challenge. “You love hypotheticals.”

She’s quiet a minute, pondering that. “I can’t know what I would have been like if I’d never met you,” she says. “But if I’d never met you, I wouldn’t know you, so I couldn’t love you.”

“Meeting us didn’t make you incapable of love,” I point out.

“No,” she says slowly. “Loving you did. Because of what you did to me, I will never feel love. I will never feel safe. I will never feel whole.”

A flash of anger rises in me, the urge to lash out, defend myself, punish her for hurting me back, even though that would only make it worse. I battle down the demon and nod, releasing her hand. “Time will change your mind.”

She shakes her head, her big, grey-blue eyes sad. “Some things can’t be changed. They can’t be undone. Don’t you get it, Duke? I’ll never heal from what you did to me. We’ll never be together the way you imagine.”

Her words remind me too much of something her brother said to me before we left, and my irritation builds. Fuck Colt Darling. He doesn’t know anything, and neither does Mabel.

“We’re together now,” I point out.

“I’m sorry,” she says, and she reaches out, her small, soft fingers grazing my cheek. Before I can react, she rolls over, turning her back to me and pulling the blanket further to her side in the process.

I roll onto my back, throw my arm over my eyes, and stew.

What right does she have to say she can’t love me? She thinks she’s too special for me. I bet she loves Baron, though. I bet she thinks he’s special enough. They probably think they’re twin flames, but I’m his real twin. If she can love anyone, it should be me. Everybody loves me. Everybody except, apparently, her.

I don’t see why. I’ve been good to her. I make her feel good, make her laugh. I always made sure she had fun, that she liked whatever we did. I made her cum, even when she begged me not to.

Except tonight, Baron took that from me. Tonight, he did it. That’s supposed to be my job.

Baron never makes her cum. He doesn’t want her to feel good. He likes to hurt her.

If he’s going to be the one making her cum now, then what am I here for? If he takes the one thing I’m good at, they won’t need me at all.

I kick off the blanket and stare at the ceiling.

My brother doesn’t like to give pleasure. He made her cum tonight, and it ruined it for him. That’s why he’s in the basement right now. He didn’t get his fix. It sounds like he’s beating Jane with a shoe. Maybe a belt. He might fuck her afterwards, or inflicting pain might be enough. That’s what really gets him off. A dick is just another weapon for him, a way to cause pain. It’s not the only way, though.

Maybe that’s why he needs her, so he doesn’t go too far with Mabel. But Mabel won’t like that. She likes to be special, like me. I think about telling her what the noises are, telling her what he’s doing right now. I wonder what she’d do.

But when I whisper her name in the dark, she doesn’t answer.

She needs a reminder of who always made her feel good, and just how much fun we can have together. I roll over and get a little baggie from the drawer, dumping some of the blue pearls that Baron makes into my palm. I swallow two, then consider putting one back. Mabel doesn’t do drugs, so she’s a lightweight. But a couple won’t hurt her, even if one would do the job. Two will make sure she’s compliant as well as high as a kite and horny as a lioness in heat. I read somewhere that those things fuck like twenty times a day.

I put the two pearls in my mouth to wet them, then roll towards her and spit them into my palm with plenty of saliva. I slip my hand under the blanket, finding her bare ass. I slide my finger down her slit. Her pussy is swollen and hot, and my cock stirs. I push one of the pearls slowly inside her, resisting the urge to moan aloud at the hot squeeze of her cunt around my finger. I fuck it slowly in and out, getting harder with each pass. She shifts and murmurs something in her sleep.

I grind my palm against her ass, cupping the other pearl. Dragging my finger from her pussy, I notch the wet little bead in the dip of her asshole. Then, slowly, I sink my finger in. Her ass is even tighter, and though that’s usually Baron’s territory, he’s not here right now. I slide my finger in and out, in and out. I can feel the pearls start to swirl through my system, and I get more insistent, pumping into Mabel’s ass, trying not to think about Colt doing this to me.

Then it’s all I can think about, and I add another finger, and I’m so hard. I notch the head of my bare cock to her ass, forcing inside. She lets out a squeal and starts to struggle, pulling off me.

“Baron, don’t,” she cries, her voice scratchy from sleep.

“It’s Duke,” I growl, and I roll her onto her stomach, my chest bearing down on her back.

She struggles again, and I kiss her ear, her neck. “Just relax, mia amata ,” I say. “Let me make you feel good.”

I slide a hand under her, massaging her pussy, her clit. She whimpers, her hips jerking. “What did you do to me?” she asks, alarm and panic in her voice.

“I just made sure you’d feel as good as you make me feel,” I say, skimming my lips along her shoulder. Her skin feels like silk, like wonder and miracles. That’s how I know I’m in wonderland. “Don’t you feel good?”

I slip my finger into her slit, and she gets it wet, even while she’s still resisting. The Alice will take her to wonderland too, whether she wants it to or not. It will make her stop protesting and start begging to be fucked soon enough.

Dad said a girl’s refusal doesn’t mean she doesn’t want to fuck. Girls just play hard to get because they think it’s cute to pretend they don’t enjoy sex like men do. But they do. If a girl gets wet, that means I’m making her feel good. If she cums, that means she wanted to fuck, even if she denies it. That’s what he said the first time, when he brought over two girls from our school and said Baron and I couldn’t leave the room until we were real men and they weren’t virgins anymore.

When I push into Mabel, she struggles again. “It hurts,” she whimpers, trying to free herself. I push in deeper, groaning with pleasure at her tightness.

“I know,” I say, pulling out and pushing in deeper this time. “But it feels like fucking heaven to me. I can’t help myself, baby. I’ve been waiting so long for this. Just relax and let me in.”

“Please, Duke,” she begs.

“I love it when you beg for me,” I growl, fucking her slow and deep, not sparing her the last inch that makes her sob loud enough to drown the sounds from the basement. After I cum, I pull out and go down on her, and then I slide up and bury myself in her again.

By now, the drugs have taken over completely, and we’re both in wonderland. She’s so fucked up her pupils are blown wide open, and she doesn’t protest anymore. I fuck her pussy, and her ass, and her mouth, until I can’t tell one from the other. Until she’s not Mabel, and I’m not Duke, and sometimes we’re not even human.

We’re lions tearing apart the bed in our mating frenzy. Then I’m back, and I’m fucking that girl in the room in our Fifth Avenue apartment while Dad watches, telling me how to make her wet, make her cum. I’m Dad, pushing his son aside and licking her pussy, showing him how it’s done. I’m Baron, watching. I’m Baron in the basement, fucking Jane’s guts out through a hole he carved in her abdomen. I’m Jane, begging him to take my ass instead. I’m Colt, walking into the basement, seeing what’s happening. I’m Duke, standing over Colt while he kneels, choking on my cock until I cum down his throat. I’m Colt, his fist in my hair and his dick in my ass, slamming into me under the treehouse in their grandfather’s backyard. I’m Mabel, taking my place under that tree, taking her brother’s pierced cock in her ass until she screams for mercy. I’m Mabel, her sore pussy stretched around both me and Baron, screaming and sobbing and begging us to let her go. I’m myself, giving her mercy and sliding into her ass instead. I’m Olive, climbing into my lap—

Not that one.

I’m Mabel, climbing onto my lap, riding me now. I’m Duke, coming, and coming, and coming.

Coming undone.

Undone.

Coming down. Everything hurts.

I’m so tired I can’t think.

I can’t sleep.

My dick feels like it’s going to fall off. I’m sticky and I want to peel my skin off, scratch it off. The smell of our bodies covered in cum makes me gag, but Mabel takes the shower before I can get up. I drag myself after her. I’m hard again, and it hurts so bad we’re both hiccupping with sobs when we fuck again, against the wall where the blood ran down earlier. It runs down from her ass this time, and I kneel and bend her over and drink it. It’s salty and mixed with cum.

I vomit into the toilet.

When she gets out, Mabel’s shaking and alternately grinding her teeth and chattering, but she wants to change the sheets. I didn’t know people did that. My sheets were just always clean, fresh when I got home from school, like magic.

The magic is gone. Wonderland has gone dark.

I can’t sleep.

Mabel is moaning softly beside me through clenched teeth, her fists shoved into her eye sockets. I writhe on the clean sheets beside her, starting to sweat. Mabel keeps asking what’s happening. She asks me what’s wrong with her, what I did to her, begs me to make it go away.

I can’t. I can’t do anything for her now. I probably should have only given her one. I want to fuck again but I’m too strung out. I yell at the ceiling and into the pillows. I’m shivering. I curl into the fetal position and wait out the misery. Mabel writhes. She whimpers and shakes and pulls a pillow over her head. I cover us in blankets and wrap myself around her, locking her in my arms.

She’s mine now. She’ll never leave again. I won’t let her. She’ll remember how to love me. She did it before, so she can do it again. We’ll keep her until she does, no matter how long it takes. She’s back where she belongs. So am I.

I sleep.